We are being told cloud is cheaper but what about its environmental impact – are the clouds green?

It would seem that cloud computing is the natural way to go for the sake of nature. I am basing my response on a study commissioned by Microsoft, and conducted by WSP and Accenture, that was published in November 2010. This study discovered that energy savings of up to 30% could be attained by moving from local servers in server rooms to equivalent hosted solutions.

A result I found most interesting was that the smaller the organisation considered, the more effective the energy reduction proved to be; as small businesses have almost the same resources as larger organisations without the scalability to reduce consumption per head. For a business of 100 people, the gains are as much as 90%, while for larger enterprises the reductions dipped to 30% (which is still significant).

When we look at the motivation to conserve energy, large data centres as run by Microsoft and Amazon are highly motivated to innovate to reduce cost at a wholesale level. But, a small business or small corporate data centre lacks the motivation or budget to innovate to reduce costs. So cloud computing creates the need for the innovation required.

According to the report, the power reduction comes from four key areas:

• Dynamic Provisioning: This means that as resources are required by a specific client they are assigned in the data centre, and when they are no longer needed they are claimed back. In this way, many clients scale up and down on the same set of resources elastically.
• Multi Tenancy: This allows multiple businesses and multiple people to share the same infrastructure for the same application, ensuring reduced surplus equipment is used.
• Server Utilisation: Standard servers are only partially used and spend many hours of each day idle. By sharing the resources over a wider pool of end users there is less power consumed by idle servers.
• Data Centre Efficiency: Innovation in data centre design to achieve improved cooling and power conditioning, which ensures reduced consumption.

Clearly, this is compelling advice that indicates that we will not only be accessing a more stable server environment and gaining productivity from cloud-based applications, we will also be improving the longevity of our delicate planet. So, in my opinion, the clouds are looking very green.

Of course, do explore your options and ensure that the cloud solutions you are considering for adoption in 2011 are the best applications for your business and not just a greener choice for IT. But, do make a New Year's resolution to have great IT systems for your business in 2011, as Australia needs to make 2011 the year of working more productively.

All the best for your festive season and a happy New Year, and do let me know if you have any great IT questions for 2011.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

How do we reduce the amount of time our systems are down?

In the past when I've been asked this question I've talked about getting the investment in infrastructure right, and having an accountable support structure in place to ensure time is spent on proactive management instead of constant fire fighting.

I'm now starting to talk about investing in redundant internet connections to ensure an ongoing connection to cloud based solutions (either public clouds or private clouds in stable server farm environments).

So, what are public clouds and private clouds and how do you know what to use when? And, no, there aren't any cows wandering around in server farms! It's just another term for your set of servers in a data centre.

I like to think of public cloud as utility computing. Instead of running your own generator to produce electricity, you connect your home and office to the power grid. So, essentially, public cloud refers to a large scale server solution offered to a large number of people where you get a slice of a system or application you require. Examples of this are Yahoo EC3 offering virtual server space, or Google-Apps and Microsoft Office365 offering online applications to one and all. There are already hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of this sort of offering in the marketplace and the offerings are growing every day from CRM applications to accounting solutions.

Another huge benefit of public cloud solutions is that they look after the backup and DR, so you remove this often overlooked overhead from your list of IT issues. Of course, if you have a loss of connection at the office you also have the option of using a mobile device to make direct access to your cloud based solution giving you even more redundancy.

On the other hand, private cloud is where a company places its own servers into a data centre and makes them available to a controlled list of internal staff or clients for their own applications and storage solutions. There are many forms of this out there as well.

It is not yet entirely clear when to use public cloud and when to go private. Each requirement needs to be looked at and options considered for quality, security, robustness and total cost.

There are issues with security including where data resides and who has access to it at a government level. Certainly for politically sensitive information public cloud is a big no. For the SME sector where your leaked data is unlikely to make it to WikiLeaks, the issue may be more about the access controls and the quality of the security systems that stops your competitors and other hackers accessing your information stored online.

Other issues around quality of the infrastructure used, and time delays accessing information stored on servers too far from you (such as in America), also need to be understood before your selections are made.

Now is definitely a good time to be researching cloud based solutions, keeping in mind how stable and secure they are, and how they can reduce down time in your business. Solutions like Office365 by Microsoft and Telstra are claiming they will offer 99.9% uptime so less than 45 minutes a month of down time or less than nine hours a year. There are many other public cloud offerings that offer the same or better. Private cloud solutions will be dependent on the quality of the data centre you select and the robustness of the infrastructure installed.

As with other complex technology decisions, seek advice from a good advisor to reduce your research effort and ensure sound strategic decisions are made to minimise wasting of resources, time and effort and to ensure IT is enabling your growth.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

What do we need to do to our IT environment to appease banks and external investors?

There is little – if any – demand placed on small businesses to comply with standards for IT. However, as you grow and seek funding, it becomes very important to have good productivity systems embedded in your technology. It is then important to ensure the continuity and security of your business systems and IP are well looked after.

Why do the world's largest companies spend so much money on ensuring their IT systems are robust and recoverable? It is, of course, to ensure that they don't suffer embarrassing disturbances as we are seeing this week at the NAB. Even a delay in standard processes is frowned upon by government agencies and other organisations. My observation is that this is becoming more of an issue in the small and medium business sector today, but is not being addressed well enough yet.

The example I observed this week is of a logistics company that once received orders by phone, fax and email, converted those to paper requests or radio verbal requests and passed them to the drivers. Twelve months ago, they gave the drivers handheld devices and ticketing became automated from the client straight through to the driver. Sounds great, but if the system fails the drivers stop instantly for lack of instructions.

Clearly this business needs to review its system recovery in light of the new application in place, but it came as no surprise to me that they hadn't done this.

Over the past three years, IT systems have become more embedded in our day-to-day processes than ever before. However, the IT advisors have not really kept up with the need for fail over and disaster recovery systems and planning.

So let's look at how this happens...

1) Request from business unit for improved software system.
2) Software firm advises on project.
3) Budget is assigned for development and set up (hardware is typically out of scope).
4) Hardware is required but is seen as a threat to software budget which is already stretched.
5) Minimal hardware is purchased.
6) System goes live.
7) Problems are ironed out.
8) Celebration begins.

By now the business has spent more than it ever envisaged on the implementation and is heartily sick of change in the IT area. No one dares to bring up the old thorn of redundancy, backup or recovery and so the system runs unchecked until performance issues (with the under-specified equipment) or a disaster occurs. This is the point where we typically get called in to fix it!

Of course, there are savvy businesses out there that plan for the full cost of a system's implementation, but rarely will the consultants tell the whole truth for fear of losing the job before it starts.

As the business owner or manager you need to be aware of the pitfalls of the industry where each party in the implementation space wants to get the premium share of the project budget and will actively deny the cost of other components of the project.

So as you grow and invest in your business, an external eye from an investor or a bank may pull you up on these issues to ensure you are running a robust business. Your alternative to waiting for that embarrassing day is to prepare by having your system's performance, fail over and recoverability audited regularly by an independent body. As well as ensuring that all plans for upgrade include the system required to run as well as the systems required for a full recovery in a timely manner.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Business has taken off and our IT team is stretched – what do we do now?

In a small business with less than a couple of hundred staff, scalability in IT is a really difficult thing to manage well. Over-resourcing in equipment or staff is expensive, and now people are looking seriously at elasticity in the supply of IT. Cloud computing is being hailed as the solution. Turn it on, turn it off as required, get just what you need and pay the right price for it. Sounds simple right?

However, moving to this holy grail of IT solutions is fraught with issues and does nothing about the scalability of your IT support services. Each move to the cloud is a project that requires resources to find the right solution, build the business case for the move, design the project, run the test case, do the work, and clean up the fall out.

If your business is growing and your IT systems need refreshing, waiting for your limited resources to have spare capacity for updates and expansion or evaporation (as I like to call 'migration to the cloud') is possibly not the best course of action. Many businesses, ours included, are finding hiring new IT staff is getting harder as the war on talent heats up, with only 5.1% unemployment and limited immigration of skilled professionals. Hiring the right person is becoming less of an option as it is harder to offer an IT person the right environment in a non-IT related business.

In the cloud, we already have Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). There are now elastic offerings in IT; specifically, the next trend on the way is Technology as a Service (TaaS), where a single company will offer hardware, software, hosting, connectivity, mobility and IT services as a monthly fee type of solution.

As a result, owning any hardware may become old hat. You will run off virtual servers on virtual desktops, off mobile devices that work anywhere. But when any component of this stops working, you will call your TaaS provider and they will resolve it for you. Simply put, you will have a one-stop-shop providing everything you need in technology for a monthly fee.

This is something like a telco service offering you traditional fixed-line phones, then adding the fax, then the mobile phone and then the internet connection, then leasing you all the equipment you need to run the connections. The next step is to add in the other servers, PCs and IT support. Twenty years ago when the fax machine was high tech, who could have imagined all these other services?

Today, the TaaS concept is a little sci-fi, but it is not too far off. The question is – can you find these technology partners of the future who will cover some aspect of your elasticity problem today? There are many IT service providers who have the capability to work with your business or your IT department to offer resources that compliment and expand your skills and availability. Bringing in specialists from these companies can help us skill or cross-skill your existing staff, while helping you to get past your bottlenecks in a timely manner. Outsourcing part or all of your support load may alternatively free up your internal resources to apply their local knowledge to projects that improve productivity for the rest of your team.

It's essential for small businesses to remain nimble to take advantage of new technology as rapidly as is sensible to ensure they get the jump on their larger, less flexible competitors. Having elastic IT resources to go with elastic licensing and platforms may be the key to this for many businesses struggling to come to terms with the rapid pace of change in the IT industry.

If you're stuck with insufficient IT resources, or lack the strategic plans that tell you where to move next in terms of technologies or resources, now is the time to partner with the right people to get the advice and people you need to solve your problems quickly and effectively – ensuring that IT is not impeding your business growth.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Is it true that Windows XP has been pulled from the shelf?

I believe it is true. If you're a big fan of Windows XP, and want to stick with it, you should run out and buy it today. We're seeing the last of the Windows XP machines being sold off right now. As of October 22, Microsoft will not allow the distributors or OEMs to have any more of it. Given that XP was released in August 2001, the program is now over nine years old.

So, my question back to you is – is it okay to upgrade to Windows 7?

I'm pleased to say that we are very comfortable with Windows 7 now that it's one year old, and no longer a fledgling operating system. We're seeing it work well in blended domains with some machines running XP and others running Windows 7, or even the ill-fated Windows Vista (which we are removing as fast as we can).

Microsoft is planning on continuing support for XP until April 2014, so you can still expect to get over three years of support for the systems you set up now – as long as you keep it up-to-date with patches.

Interestingly enough, reports are that Windows 7 is selling three times faster than Vista and has already been installed on more PCs than Vista was. While Windows XP is still the world's most popular operating system, it holds between 50-60% of market share. Windows 7 is noted as having 80% share in the netbook space.

So, what should the strategy be going forward? As I see it, there are a few choices:

• Change nothing and keep using XP
• As PCs are replaced, replace them with Windows 7
• Upgrade all machines to Windows 7 now

I am not a fan of upgrading software on old PCs, as it takes a lot of work and seldom gives good results (because new software places demands on old equipment that are not well met). The time that goes into the upgrade process is often more valuable than the equipment and leads to a very short life cycle, so it is an investment that ends up delivering no ROI.

Keeping Windows XP is probably not going to give you any benefit unless you have very special applications that will not shift across. If you do have very special software, you need to start planning and testing your migration now and push the software vendors to update. Otherwise, 2014 will be here in the blink on an eye and may mark the end of your business that is dependent on the very special software. If it's code you wrote yourself, start writing again or find a new solution soon!

So, upgrading as PCs are replaced seems to be my preference for small and medium businesses (for corporate environments, my advice would be different). No hard sell in that, but that is the way I like it. Given how slow hardware sales have been in the past two years of economic turmoil, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of PCs out there that need upgrading, so start budgeting your PC and operating system upgrades soon so that the cost doesn't catch you out.

Of course, having a good advisor to help you navigate this upgrade phase and make sure you're retiring the right equipment, and putting the right software on your new equipment, will help you get the best return on investment possible. Do consider your finance and warranty options too. It can make all the difference to your cashflow and sanity.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Keeping IT simple is not an option as complexity emerges from the cloud

Keeping IT simple is a luxury most growing businesses cannot afford. Today, every business needs to communicate and keep track of finances on computers. Many also design, order, build or manufacture, track or test some aspect of their products or services on computers. We not only need to store our information, we also need to manage interactions between different locations and tools.

Right now, we are seeing a fast uptake of new technologies that set businesses apart. In Australia, there are businesses growing in many sectors and it is the companies shaking off the turmoil of the past couple of years that are leading the way in technology decisions. More and more, I am seeing businesses choose cloud-based technology for aspects of their operations, and more applications are now coming to market in a “connect me” model rather than an “install me” solution.

We have been talking about cloud solutions for two years now, but it is really only in the last few months that we’ve seen real take-up of these technologies in businesses other than the early adopters. Even Microsoft has announced the early release of its Office Online solution this week – Office 365 – along with the release of hosted Exchange Server 2010 to replace the 2007 offering now available.

In any business, IT must be about productivity, efficiency and communication – with a strong focus on cost. We are starting to see cloud-based solutions that are cost-competitive with installed software, and the pace of change is faster than I have seen in our industry before.

People are talking about cloud solutions as a “disruptive technology”, meaning that it will change the way an entire industry works. I actually believe it will change the way all industries work. This means that there are lots of opportunities for new solutions. It also means lots of jobs are about to vanish. I, for one, would not like to work in the tape backup industry this year. As backup moves to online solutions, or vanishes altogether, tapes will become almost obsolete.

With so much happening, it is time for all businesses to assess their IT strategy and ensure they are discovering the new tools, and the benefits, that are becoming available to solve their problems. Doing IT just like you did last year is probably not going to cut it for much longer.

Of course, we need to think about who is providing the hosted technologies we select, and be sure they’re not about to go out of business and take our data with them. We also need to ensure that data remains our property and that we can take it somewhere else if we want to (or at least be able to reduce the cost to a hosting fee, and have read-only access to what is there).

We also need to be certain that the solutions we choose are secure. While that sounds obvious, how does a non-IT business test security? That is a difficult question to answer, so branding, reputation and scale all play a part in building consumer faith.

So, is there a bright side to all this chaos?

I think there is. Once we’ve all adopted cloud-based solutions for our applications, we’ll have lower ongoing IT costs, reduced management needs and better data protection than we have today. We just need to get through the turmoil of the next few years and see who emerges as the global dominator (or dominators) of this space.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it will get simpler – in fact, quite the opposite. We’ll have more devices connecting to more systems, and integrating more information from more places. Our networks will be more complex, our choices will become broader and the skills we need will become more specialised. Finding good people to manage this change in your business is going to be a massive challenge, as old IT skills become outdated faster than ever before.

Perhaps the best business to be in right now is IT training, as we need somebody to train the new wave of IT professionals who will all be perpetual students (my team included). Sorry, but I don’t see an end to this any time soon…

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice. David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Why are there so many specialists in IT and do we really need them?

In small business we a see a lot of specialists working as generalists. By this, I mean a couple of things...

One scenario occurs when the founder of a business is a specialist but becomes the business generalist, working on all aspects of the business because they lack the funds to hire specialists.
The other scenario occurs when technical specialists are forced to work as generalists because of a lack of specialists in other areas.
I also see business owners who are not IT savvy, and fail to see that IT is a massive industry with a rapidly expanding knowledge base. No single person can possibly have it all covered. Ultimately, for me, specialisation ties in with quality.

Let me explain...

Specialisation has many forms, and the simplest example in our business is our total focus on a single brand of PC hardware. We could offer many brands as we have access to most of them through our distributors, but we have been well served by specialising in just one.

Why? With just one brand of computer across thousands of PCs, and almost 200 hundred servers, we have very deep experience and expertise; not just with the technology, but with the company behind the technology. When it does fail (after all, all brands have failures) we know who to call, how to report the fault, and how to get the fastest possible repair carried out for the lowest impact to our clients.

We also know how to patch, manage and maintain the computers. Through our job-tracking system, we can see that statistically it takes us longer to manage the same issues with other brands of computers where clients either had existing machines when we started managing IT for them, or didn't take our advice on purchasing decisions.

Another example of specialisation over generalisation is our helpdesk, where we have multiple staff all answering general questions on computer malfunctions. We have a policy that we don't train more than two of them to any depth on any one technical topic. The reason for this policy is that we need depth in each topic, but we also need breadth. If we have a whole bunch of email specialists, who will know about the details of wide area networks or security or other equally-important topics? We then encourage our techs to depend on each other to share problems, and use the best specialist to resolve problems quickly so the client is not left hanging.

We need specialists more than many realise; as does any complex industry. In IT the answers are always available online, but a specialist will typically find the answers faster than a generalist. A specialist is also more likely to recognise the solution when they find it, and so spend less time experimenting with possible alternatives.

Something I have observed over 22 years of working with computers is that the less experiments are run on a computer (or trial fixes) the more stable the computers tend to be. So less time fixing them leads directly to better performance.

So, when you think about IT and the quality of a solution, or the speed of resolution of a problem, you need to think about finding the right specialist – not just a person who can eventually figure it out. IT is no longer that thing on the side of your business that you can work on once your staff have gone home. If it breaks, you need a well-trained, experienced specialist to get it fixed right and fixed fast.

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice. David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Is cloud computing the future for business?

My kids are four-and-a-half and seven years old. They have only ever used cloud-based software! Does that make you feel old all of a sudden, because you still use software that has been installed on your computer? There is no longer any doubt in my mind that in future, software will be something we connect to rather than install and use.

Here's a quick computer/software timeline for you.

We started with software on disks which we loaded into memory and executed. That was the 1980s. We then added tape drives for additional capacity – I was doing this on a Commodore 64 in 1985. By 1986 we had PCs with a hard drive onto which we could load programs from big floppy disks. By 1995 we had software on CDs and by 2000 we had it on DVDs. Now, 10 years later, we all expect to be able to download software from the internet and use it.

So the next logical step is not even to download it. Just use it where it was built. This is kind of what cloud computing is. Of course, we're talking IT, so it is never quite that simple.

Cloud computing can mean your server is no longer in your office and runs as part of a larger system in a data centre somewhere, or it can be that you use an application such as email or an accounting app that sits 'in the cloud' – which is just a newer way of saying 'on the internet'.

Examples of this sort of technology include Google's Gmail and other office apps (such as Google Calendar and Google Docs) and if you don't want the cost savings and compromises that go with moving to Google there is also the Microsoft Telstra joint venture T-Suite which offers a host of cloud based applications including Exchange server, SharePoint and OCS the communications hub. There is also the MYOB challenger, Xero.

They're all great for micro businesses that don't want to worry about servers and backup and stuff. Then there is Salesforce.com (a client database) for CRM and other similar solutions. All of these solutions are encouraging you to use shared, cloud-based infrastructure and to move away from having your own in-house solutions.

Other products that can remove technology and related issues from your business include BizProtect, which offers cloud-based backup of your servers. It gives you totally automated backup to offsite storage by taking snapshots of your server every 30 minutes and sends the data offsite at the end of each day. Very new tech.

Then there's hosted PABX, which can save you from installing a phone system and instead gives you an elastic phone solution where you always have what you need but only pay for what you use.

This 'only pay for what you use' is a fairly common thread with cloud-based solutions. If you do not buy it and install it, you do not need to own it. The prices are set such that it is about the same price over three or four years to rent what you need and no more. This is great for businesses that are volatile or seasonal.

Don't expect big cost savings overall just yet, however, as more people get onto the new solutions we can expect costs to drop significantly. Support costs shift from maintaining infrastructure to managing connections and supporting people who need more training. Certainly in the short-term administrative costs will remain the same. Once key players emerge the administration costs will reduce as standard practices are established.

The downside is, of course, that your dependence on access to quality internet services goes from not much to 100%. When you are offline you are out of action. This is another reason we need the National Broadband Network (NBN) to be rolled out in a hurry. Of course, with a spare mobile broadband device you will be able to access you services from any location any time, even when your primary connection is down.

With cloud computing it does not matter what size your business is; there are solutions to suit any size. That said, you should not leap into contracts based on the sales pitch from the software company, because they know how to sell their solution. As I say with all IT decisions, find a trusted advisor who has your best interests at heart and listen to their advice on cloud solutions that are the right shape for your organisation.

I regularly assist businesses with 15 to 150 PCs to find the right technology. Products I am currently advising clients to take up include cloud-based email, CRM, project management, business planning, backup and PABX. I have not yet had a client take up the option of a cloud-based finance application but expect I will soon.

In my business, Combo, we currently use the following mix of cloud-based technologies to deliver our services and I must say it is all working very well. For CRM we use Salesforce.com, for backup we use BizProtect, for HR management and business planning we use Workitonline. In the next few months we will adopt a hosted PABX, as our phone system is about to be out of warranty and will then pose a significant risk to our business.

Over the next five years I expect we will see a lot of hybrid sites where there are still servers and PCs using local data and software as well as some cloud-based solutions. However, once the NBN has been put in place, there will be no reason to keep IT gear local. We will be making use of cloud-based everything and using very lightweight computers and pads to connect to whatever we need from wherever we are.

If you have not yet identified a good digital guide (IT advisor) for your business, now is probably the time to find one as the next few years will bring more complexity in IT than ever before. Once the dominant players in 'the cloud' emerge, it may settle down. Or it may be that we learn more ways to complicate our lives with a wider array of technologies.

Do keep in mind that, in 10 years time, a significant proportion of the workforce will be doing jobs that do not exist today. For example, could you have imagined in the year 2000 that there would be such as thing as a full-time job in connecting one cloud-based application to another to synchronise data? Today that is a $150,000 a year job, if you know how to do it well. Could you have imagined a job in search engine promotion? What about digital media production?

We live in a world of rapid change and the change on the horizon is definitely cloud-based. It may be time to make sure your digital guide is an experienced pilot!

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice. David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

How do we improve our technology intelligence?

So, you've built a successful business, you've hired some good staff, and you've survived the GFC. Now you need to ramp up your business capabilities to deliver without ramping up your costs. You want your business to run to a winning formula, and you have a hunch that your IT systems are – or soon will be – impeding your growth.

IT systems typically grow organically as businesses grow, but there comes a time when this approach becomes expensive. If you have 20 staff and 20 different computers, and a pile of servers in the server room of various ages, you probably have enough work to keep a full-time IT person very busy. You will have 20 unique problems across the 20 unique machines, and probably have a mix of operating systems and applications as well.

What I have learned over 16 years of looking at business systems, is that the system you get will reflect your thinking.

On a scale of one to 10 (where one is 'untrue', and 10 is 'true') how do you rate yourself on the following?

• We have an up-to-date IT plan as part of our business plan.
• Our IT plan has a realistic or costed budget assigned.
• We have the right resources assigned to resolving each of the parts of the IT puzzle, including: web strategy, finance system, line of business applications, infrastructure, help desk, etc.
• We have the right infrastructure now and for the next three years.
• We know who is accountable for each aspect of our plan and our support.

So, how did you score?

If you are serious about growth and committed to doing it profitably, you will have scored each of the above statements at seven or above, so a score of 35+ is encouraging.

Unfortunately, most businesses do not have an approach to IT that sees them building the platforms required to support their growth. Often this will lead to high delivery cost of goods and services, and frequent disruptions to business. Ongoing IT problems also lead to unmotivated staff, especially the sub-40 year old set who do everything via computers.

So, how do you – as a business leader – upgrade your thinking?

The first point I would make here is that you need to tap into a pool of specialists. IT is forever becoming more specialised, and so you need to find the right specialists for each aspect of IT; from strategic overview to project delivery to day-to-day maintenance.

It is now highly unlikely that an SME business will find an all-rounder who really knows where all the future benefits in IT will be found. In my business, we have a team of people assigned to exploring new technologies to find the ones that actually add value to a business quickly and effectively. Many technologies we look at seem impressive but turn out to be distractions or disasters for one reason or another.

In the last six months, we've assessed a dozen off-site backup solutions. So, when you ask our team about this technology they have both a broad and deep knowledge of this emerging technology area. This knowledge is held in a team – not in an individual – and the cost of accumulating this knowledge is high, so it should not be borne by a single SME company. In our case, the benefit to over 100 clients justifies the expense. And, we do this for many areas of technology, from spam filtering to security to server performance, and beyond.

My next suggestion is to remove yourself from the low level aspects of device technology, and start thinking strategically about what systems your business will need for the management of resources and communication going forward. Then, leave the bits and bytes to the technical team. There's no point having a great network with terrific PCs and servers, if you lack the tool to build your communication systems, such as a document management solution, a services management database, or a production management system.

Now, add in a suitable budget with informed requirements and pricing so you can afford to implement without spending a day on cost cutting to save $50 on a purchase. Better still – form a relationship with a supplier who will always give you a fair price and build on the trust to reduce your involvement. Do check up on them intermittently to ensure they're keeping your best interests at heart. It is always better for a supplier to make a regular small margin than an occasional large one, but not all suppliers think long-term – find one that does.

These are some good first steps to get you out of the daily grind of high-stress IT in a small business. Of course, there is always more you can do, but it boils down to finding a trusted advisor and building lasting relationships that allow you to focus on your business – not the IT problems within your business. This will give you capacity to handle growth without ramping up costs.

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice. David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

What is the real cost of a computer crash?

The big news in bad IT this week is Virgin Blue, who was forced to cancel flights after their airport check-in system failed for 21 hours – as reported on Monday here.

The question we don't see answered yet is how much this glitch will actually cost the company. Bear in mind this is a large public company that is constantly under scrutiny by press and media. There are, of course, the immediate costs of fixing the glitch, the cost of not getting people onto flights, the cost of hotels for stranded passengers, and then – if we look deeper – the ancillary costs such as stressed employees and damage to the brand.

No doubt the cost of this glitch will be significant; possibly higher than the cost of implementing a more robust IT system in the first place. Unfortunately, hindsight is not a replacement for failover systems. To make it worse, the system was outsourced to a third party who should have invested in robust systems.

Sure, in our SME businesses we can have our systems down, and hardly expect it to make the local paper; let alone the national media. But, this was just short of a day of downtime for Virgin Blue, and the fallout from it has been extensive. I'm sure they had a disaster recovery path planned and tested for this system, hence why the outage was only measured in hours – not days or weeks.

So, how would your business cope should your computer systems fail? Do you know where your recovery systems are, or how long it would take to bring them online? Do you have people who know what to do in the event of a major glitch? Have you checked the quality and capability of third party providers?

Unfortunately, most SME businesses do not have a monitored backup system – if they even back up at all. Even fewer have a structured path to recovery.

Most IT providers that work with SME clients sell backup tools and methods, but very few discuss recovery. Several years ago, I would have argued that this was dangerous, but probably cost justified in small business, as the cost of building a recovery option was high and the manual processes of rebuilding over a few days could still be used. However, in the almost nine years that I've been in business, computers have penetrated further and further into businesses and have become entrenched in our communication and production cycles. Today, we are so dependent on our PCs that business simply comes to a standstill when computers fail. This means that we now need a structured recovery solution, despite the cost of building and maintaining it.

The good news is that, in recent months, the cost of having offsite recovery options has come down in price to a point where any sized business can find an affordable solution to the recovery issue.

Examples of the technology options vary enormously, and it's important to understand why the cheapest offsite backup options may not be right for your business, in terms of recovery cycles. Just having files offsite is no longer good enough. It's time SME businesses started demanding a recovery time as part of the proposition, including a commitment that data of a certain age will be up and running within a certain amount of time.

Many of the online do-it-yourself repositories take days to get your data back to you. But, there's currently a revolution in this area of technology, and it's about to go another step in just a few months. Many large hosting organisation such as PacNet and other ISPs are about to offer businesses the opportunity to store backup solutions in their data centres, and have failover servers on standby for almost instant recovery. At the moment, these services are available from smaller providers, but the quality of the service is less than top notch and the prices are relatively high.

Soon, the quality will improve and the price will drop, as large companies bring competition to this lucrative market. It's already a huge business in America where broadband is faster and cheaper than it is here (don't get me started on why we need some form of NBN soon!).

Ultimately, make sure you're investing not just in backup, but also in a recovery solution that will get your complete systems back up and running in hours – not days or weeks. Then ensure you have them tested, and keep testing to ensure all your systems can be recovered and scripts are updated regularly.In summary, what we can all learn from Virgin Blue this week is:

1. Have offsite backup that is a full system snapshot.
2. Ensure there are disaster recovery capabilities.
3. Run a test of the recovery.
4. Script the process.
5. Keep testing and updating.

As always, there are multiple levels of solutions and a huge array of price points. If you're not sure of the level of cover you need, seek a knowledgeable advisor.

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice. David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

As a company director, how do I protect myself from employees who want to collect $20,000 rewards for my software piracy?

This week’s question came up in response to this article, about dobbing in your company for software fraud. It’s a tough call when staff can install programs and the company owners become liable.

Before you dismiss this threat, ask yourself this question: Do all of my staff love me, even the ones who left over the last few months?

There are, of course, arguments for using free open source applications to avoid licensing costs. But, there are downsides to those solutions in terms of needing to train staff on unfamiliar applications and spending time fudging processes to replicate the functions in more expensive software. This is not an argument I like to get into, as there are multiple arguments in either direction for every tool we might choose to use. At the end of the day, there is always some tool a business should use to improve productivity that isn’t free. And so my following comments are important to note...

In small to medium businesses, I’ve seen that the worst culprit of fraudulent software installation is often the in-house IT guy who wants to get the work done, but doesn’t want to ask the boss for more dollars. So, trying to be helpful, he grabs an illegal copy of that software the worker needs and sets it up for them.

I have also seen staff brining software from home and installing it themselves so they can do the work they need to do without delays. Without stringent IT security measures in place, this can happen all too easily. Often this software is still in place long after the offending staff have moved on.

This is just another reason why, as a business owner or company director, you should consider getting a reputable firm to do a software audit of your systems to make sure you’re compliant. If you then have your systems monitored and managed by an external source, you can be alerted to the installation of any new software and check whether or not it is legal.

Today’s management tools are designed to keep a watchful eye over your systems to prevent issues such as license key duplications, or cracked license codes. They also monitor machine resources and security breaches.

I also suggest that while you’re having a licensing audit done, you also have a backup and recovery audit done to ensure your IT resources can really guarantee that you’ll recover from a data incident. Many IT guys in the small business world underestimate the importance of backup, and design minimalistic solutions that leave out the opportunity for a speedy recovery even if the data files are available.

Independent audits will cost you money to have done properly, but if you go to a reliable source you will learn something that gives you a great return on your investment. There is no such thing as a perfect IT solution in a small business environment as we just can’t afford to do it all. So, it’s always good to review and prioritise the shortcuts and the needs for expenditure.

If you run an audit and all you learn is that you’re happy with the compromises you’ve taken and the position you’re in, the peace of mind will have been worth the expense. This will allow you to stop worrying about the elephant in the corner, and get on with building your successful business. Without the risk of massive fines or employees getting the bonus they need to start a new life.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Does social networking have a place inside business?

This week's question is a little off track for me, as I usually focus on the strategies for making IT work for a business, whereas this is about making a business work by using IT. A subtle, but important, difference.

After a conversation at the Microsoft Australia Partner Conference, I am convinced there is something in this for teams – large and small – and that we may be missing a big team-building opportunity. Just as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter have become important for broad social networking, I believe that if we fail to adopt new technologies such as, Huddle.com for sharing documents, and Yammer.com for connecting with co-workers we will be missing out on opportunities to build our teams.

The key to these technologies is that they allow groups to communicate better on multiple levels, in a time-shifted manner, so you no longer need to be present to be part of the team and to share experiences and contributions. As we have more ways to communicate, and computers become more prevalent and more connected, I think these tools must form some part of our corporate culture even in small companies of a few staff.

Benefits include:

• Foster staff loyalty by building internal communities.
• Keep conversations alive inside the walls of your office and retain the feel of 'small', even as you grow beyond the motherhood team of a small business.
• Inspire your employees to work together in new and creative ways.

Ideas I have of how to make use of these tools include sharing:

• Companies successes quickly with all staff.
• Changes in policy and procedure.
• Upcoming event information.
• Photos from the latest staff event.
• Progress of projects inside and outside the company walls.
• Developing new ideas in and from the team.

While many of these things can be done on a simple intranet, there are more web 2.0 ways of driving this to compel the younger generations to get involved and engaged by the company culture.

No doubt we are about to see a new wave of consulting offers from people who have figured out which of these technologies are leaders, and how to use them to gain productivity, efficiency, connection and – ultimately – employee loyalty.

I would love to hear from readers who are successfully using these tools to engage their employees, and how they have derived quantifiable benefits from them without losing hours to social chit chat that extends beyond office walls.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Do we still need a server for our business or can we do IT in the cloud?

Good question, and one that may be worth reassessing as the big IT companies refocus on delivering applications online through web browsers.

I spent a large chunk of last week at the Microsoft Partner Conference on the Gold Coast, which was a very pleasant time. Shame so much of it was indoors learning about the future of IT and not outside in the sun. Despite the lack of clouds in the sky, indoors the message was very clear – Microsoft is committing all of its development resources to building applications that run on massive servers on the internet, and do away with the need to have servers in the office. Their marketing slogan is "We are all in" sitting in a fluffy cloud image.

Large, efficient, centralised servers will offer all our regular applications, from the Office suite to email to financial applications and SQL databases – so, we just log in and use what we need from wherever we are. The tools are coming online now, and developers are writing applications as we speak. So, for basics like email, we can move right now, and there promises to be a flurry of new releases of online applications over the next 18 months.

So, what do I think about all of this? In short, I'm keen to see people begin to migrate their platforms in the direction of the cloud, as I see some distinct benefits for the growth businesses I work with. These benefits include:

• Total scalability from one person to 30,000 on one system, without ever having to worry about upgrading hardware.
• Price is 100% known as there is no support variables or hardware failures to cover.
• Instant upgrades without effort each time the software vendor releases an update.
• Access from anywhere without needing to build a complex network.
• Better security than small businesses can afford to buy.
• Backup looked after by the host.
• Disaster recovery no longer an issue.

But, what are the challenges with this new realm of technology?

As you guessed, there are many challenges ahead of us. This is what we call disruptive technology. The internal combustion engine was disruptive technology. Before that, we used horse and cart to get around. The motor carriage completely changed that realm of transport, even leading to aircraft capable of flying thousands of kilometres on engine-driven propellers. This put thousands of blacksmiths who fitted horseshoes out of business. There were good cars and bad cars built, but today the cars manufactured are pretty reliable devices that we have come to trust – and depend upon.

Similarly, I see a few years of confusion ahead as individuals struggle with a wide variety of choice for cloud-based solutions, both to replace the tools we use today and to supplement them.

Microsoft will have many competitors who appear to have the upper hand for awhile, but will invest billions to dominate the market place. Until there is a clear winner in each application space, there will be a high demand for guidance and support, as we will be faced with more choice than ever before – and many choices will lead to dead ends and bad investments.

I hope at the end of the upheaval we have found new and better ways to make use of computers, and feel the change was worth it. What I am seeing of new collaboration tools, and methods of sharing more complex information faster, leads me to believe it will be worth the struggle.

If you are considering the alternative cloud solutions on offer – and I firmly believe you should – do ask for help from people who work in the space with multiple clients and benefit from their experience. A move to cloud computing runs the risk of unexpected twists and turns, so you need an experienced advisor to keep these to a minimum.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

How do I get my boss to stop doing the IT work and start growing our business?

Would you believe me if I told you I’m not allowed to touch the servers in my business anymore? It’s true!

A few years ago, my technical team ganged up on me – despite my qualifications as a graduate engineer with all sorts of Microsoft qualifications and years of server management experience – and changed the administrator’s password and effectively locked me out of the backend of our systems.

Their instincts may have been driven more by the mistakes I was capable of making as an out-of-date technician than the fact that I should have been focussed on business growth. Either way, it had much the same effect.

Unfortunately, people who are capable of working with technology often find themselves drawn into the depths of it to the distraction of all else. We all know the answers to every problem – especially IT ones – are just a few searches and clicks away on Google. And so we can be easily sucked in by the calls for assistance from the staff around us.

I often talk about ‘hero work’ in IT where the technically capable like to swoop in to fix a problem and zoom off to the fading cries of, “You’re a genius, thanks!” This kind of hero work has instant gratification for people who like solving problems or like helping people. Now, if you’re like me and you like helping people AND solving problems, the short-term rewards of this kind of work can drive you to work extraordinary hours and hardly notice the time.

However, this is rarely the right solution – as my team observed. Often, having a go at solving technology problems leads to more problems, due to the lack of knowledge of the grey areas. It is far better to get the right resources aligned to solve the problems on a long-term basis. And this is never the right job for a managing director – even a capable one.

Imagine if you will a marketing company where one of the directors has a strong grasp of technology, due to personal involvement in his early career. When the business is small, he starts looking after the PCs himself. As the network grows, he looks after more of it and directs the decisions. Eventually, as the business grows further, he outsources to a bloke he knows and manages him closely and jumps in when the chips are down. His technical interest remains and many of the problems are solved, but his staff are troubled by an environment where they can’t get their problems looked at or fixed, unless the director is around. Hardly empowering, right?

The solution for the marketing company was to outsource to a managed services company where the marketing firm’s staff were encouraged to call the helpdesk if a problem arose, or a new starter needed a PC. Suddenly, the director was set free to work on growing the business, and so it grew.

Today, even technical experts who work with technology all day for multiple clients, and do training courses and read technical books in their spare time, rely on being part of a team to solve problems effectively. The breadth and depth required to work effectively and keep at the forefront of technology is simply exhausting and to believe you can do it in your spare time is pure folly.

If you need to assess the resources you have working on the IT systems in your business, find a technology guide who understands your scale of business and work with them to get the right solutions and services in place. This will enable you to focus on business growth and future value, rather than being distracted by IT.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

What is the relationship between business growth, productivity and technology?

There is a concern about businesses that grow without increasing profitability, as they may be employing more people and increasing the risk of failure as they grow. I've had a few arguments recently about whether business growth is a good thing or not.

Clearly, adding more people or more revenue is not the focus for growing a business, but then we could argue that it isn't businesses that grow – it's the people within businesses who grow and develop, and as they do the business naturally expands.

My business, Combo, has featured on all sorts of lists for its record growth, so I feel I can add a level of experience to this conversation.

Firstly, achieving increased revenue did not make us a smarter company. It took a dedicated approach to developing our people and our technology to ensure that we were a scalable business.

Simply selling and servicing more computers did not make us profitable; in fact, quite the opposite. The bigger we got the more layers of management were required, and the less profitable we became until we developed two aspects of the business.

1. The first was our people, and here we were fortunate to receive a grant from DIIRD that allowed us to train out staff with around 100 days of training in a single year. This enhanced their capabilities significantly.

2. Next, we developed computer-based systems for monitoring computers and call handling, which allows us to deal with increased volumes of calls in a more efficient way.

So, increased staff knowledge, skill and capability, combined with productivity tools, allowed us to increase revenue without significantly increasing staff. Therefore, we were able to drive significant growth and, once again, run a profitable company.

Working with dozens of businesses every year, we see the good and the bad in terms of the use of IT as a business productivity tool, and we know that it takes a concerted effort and ongoing development of communication methods and systems, as well as job specific tools, to ensure businesses become scalable.

I've heard arguments about remaining a niche player, and so not needing to grow, and that small business can therefore be better than large business. But, is this a reason to stay small or is it instead a lack of vision in regards to where the same team of people could be with better tools for managing IP and communications?

My thoughts on the relationship between growth, productivity and technology is that each should be set in a framework of development, and that no component should become static.

If your business needs help with the development of its IT systems for communication, business planning, HR management or productivity, seek the help of a trusted advisor who has firsthand experience in the issues of a growth business and the solutions available for your industry.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

How do we know which NBN is the right one for investing in the future of Australia?

Australia is currently designing a National Broadband Network that will see us as world leaders in broadband communication in a few years' time. But now that the Coalition have revealed their plans to slash expenditure in this venture, we may find ourselves with a system that falls well short of the mark.

The Coalition wants to offer a poor quality service – a system that will be slow and ugly before it even goes live. Essentially, they propose to put a mediocre system in place for the marginalised rural and outer suburban dwellers, and leave it to private enterprise to provide better quality solutions to the more urbanised areas. They have agreed to lay out thousands of kilometres of fibre, but will leave the rest of the job to private companies who will have to build local wireless distribution points, which, according to Rod Tucker of The Age, would create "ugly street scapes across the nation".

The wireless and satellite systems being proposed by the Coalition are not going to cope with the data load that will be required in the years ahead. It would leave us with a system that would need an upgrade from the day it went live. In my business we work hard to create systems with a high ROI and low total cost of ownership, but this proposal offers the opposite - a low ROI and a high total cost of ownership.

I see this leading to a divided community, where communication and public transport will be great in some parts, but poor in others. This will have a spill over effect on the quality of education and other public services, creating gaping disparities within our population. If we want to ignore the rural sector and marginalise non-urban dwellers, this would be the way to do it.

What we have is two markedly different options. One the one hand, we have the government proposing to create a modern, high-quality broadband network. On the other, we have the opposition attempting to add to their poor record in building Australia's communication infrastructure. Part of this record includes their previous decision to not split Telstra into wholesale and retail organisations, the consequences of which have left Australia with the communications train wreck it has today.

Australia needs high quality broadband infrastructure in both urban and rural areas, to benefit the citizens of both. Development of our regional areas will ensure our population can continue to expand without pushing the demand for city real estate through the roof. And it's imperative that workers in regional areas have access to their business data, without having to travel into town to connect. It seems remarkable that a party claiming to have the best interests of SMEs at heart doesn't seem to have grasped the potential of IT for serving their mantras about building the economy and reducing waste.

I am not in favour of a government-owned communications monopoly, but I am keen to see high bandwidth delivered to businesses Australia-wide as quickly as possible, to facilitate the use of modern IT solutions.

As a provider of IT services to small and medium businesses, I am all too aware that the cost to small business of managing IT in-house is too high. As it stands, with distributed technology, such as in-house servers and phone systems, due to slow broadband services, IT is costing small business between $1,000 and $3,000 per employee per year. IT needs to be made more affordable and more scalable, and it is only through high bandwidth that this is likely to become a reality. Provided that the NBN is put in place correctly, I believe that the costs of IT can be cut in half providing a saving of $500 to $1,500 per SME employee per year.

If the opposition gets their way, it would be like all of us driving the distances we do today at 100 km/h in a model T Ford. It's simply unsustainable. It would not be too long before we strip it down to a chassis, and re-build from the wheels up to get the features we want.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

What is the greatest risk to our corporate data?

The obvious answer to this one is – whatever gets you first. There are a multitude of risks to our data when it is stored on spinning disks, connected to the whole world by thin wires. If the spinning disks don't fail and the thin wires don't let you down, your files are still at risk as they're accessible to the whole world via the internet.

Yet, despite this, the single biggest risk to your data is probably you or your staff. I'm not being sinister here; large amounts of data are lost through simple file deletion or mistakes that lead to the corruption of files.

Often, the most sophisticated security systems and the most robust of servers with redundant power and spare hard drives, and even fail-safe systems, cannot protect you from your own staff and their interactions with computers.

That said, it is still worth doing the following:

• Ensure you have a very good firewall that is managed and kept up-to-date to protect you from the latest attacks.
• Filter your email and web content to ensure it's as clean as possible to reduce risks of virus and malware.
• Run local anti-virus software to protect you from USB keys and other forms of mobile data.
• Have power protection in place and redundant hard drives.

As your business grows, it is also strongly advisable to restrict your employees' access to only the files that they need to do their work. This means that they can't accidentally wipe a folder of files that they have nothing to do with.

I must warn you at this point that security is a double-edged sword. The more you spend to lock your systems down to manage them effectively, the more you will spend to manage those same systems. It's not an expense anyone would suggest you plan to save in business though, as the issues arising from poor data management can cost a lot more than the issues arising from good data management.

Of course, if it's local damage you need to protect yourself from, the best solution is to have great backup of your work in progress. Today, you can have local backup done on a continuous, automated basis throughout the day with replication to an offsite store via the internet. Systems for this are improving rapidly at the moment, and exist at various price points and offer a range of solutions from back up only, to onsite or offsite recovery, to virtual servers or physical servers.

Depending on your budget, you can have instant fail over or slow fail over, or a quick rebuild process. Over the past few years, computers have become more important to businesses where they are relied on for many forms of communication and service management. Outages today are likely to be significantly more costly to your business than they were just a few years back. So, have your recovery windows been reduced to match the demand?

If your backup system is not as good as it should be, or is left to chance with media being exchanged manually, it is time to seek the advice of a backup specialist to get your data backed up automatically to offsite repositories. A bit like a free brake inspection on your car - it really can save you.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Why is IT for growth businesses like a hermit crab's shell?

This week I had the pleasure of attending a networking session at a design company called Hermit Crab. I was somewhat surprised to learn that office space requirements and IT solutions have a lot in common with hermit crabs.

Let me explain...

As we all know, hermit crabs live in shells and, as they grow, discard the shell they're in and find a larger, more appropriate shell to move into. Businesses do the same with offices and I am, as a business, now in my fourth shell.

Combo started in a spare bedroom of my house. As I hired staff and the business grew, we were forced to relocate to the lounge room, which was significantly larger. Before we knew it, the house was too small and we were forced to relocate the office to a larger facility. After three years of ongoing growth, we had to move yet again – this time to a full commercial office space. So far this has been okay, but I can see a time when more space will be required.

So, over time, our office space requirements have expanded significantly. Likewise, we've had to scale up our computer systems and phone systems. First, we had one small, cheap PC. Then we had two. Then we added a cheap server, and then a larger server, and then two servers. Today we have several – some physical and some virtual. Each server has a purpose and is customised to the solution it provides, by experts who understand the demands placed upon it.

Had we started with the systems we need today eight years ago, we would have failed as a business – because the cost of the equipment, licensing and maintenance of those systems could not have been suitably funded by our business as a start up. So, the hermit crab approach has been sensible and worked well.

Today, we are becoming more modular with our solutions, thanks to the brilliance of virtualisation. This lets us add virtual servers as and when we need them, and expand hardware in a more modular fashion.

Smaller businesses still need to use the hermit crab approach until they reach a level where they can access the first module of a modular system. Alternatively, they should consider a cloud-based solution because they are elastic in their nature and don't have constraints that one can grow out of.

Many people are adopting cloud-based solutions today, for this very reason. Scaling is no longer a concern, and physical equipment does not need to be replaced as growth occurs. This is going to change the nature of many IT business transactions over the next few years, and will have a deep impact on the IT server marketplace.

So what does this mean for your business? If you are in any doubt about how your business should make use of technology as you expand, it's time to review your business plan and align your IT plans to the needs of your business. If you need help with this, seek a trusted advisor who understands the impediments IT can cause in a fast-growth business, and can work with you to design the right solutions.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Our internal IT guy needs help. Where do we turn?

This is a common problem and, interestingly, by the time anyone else in the company notices that the poor, isolated IT guy needs help, it's usually long overdue. The IT guy may know that he's not keeping up with demands and requirements, or he may be blind to his own shortcomings. Either way, he is probably very stressed and making costly mistakes.

There is a huge array of responsibility in IT systems for any business with multiple computers. There is the obvious stuff like, 'fix them when they break', but there is less obvious stuff that needs to be addressed as a company grows, including:

• Capacity planning
• Security
• Disaster recovery planning
• Application selection
• Web strategy
• Project management
• Relocations

As any company grows, the technology required to keep it running changes both in scale and complexity. Different knowledge is needed to support a company with five computers as opposed to a company with 12 computers. And this keeps changing as systems grow and requirements increase.

Once your business and systems grow to need one server, it is only a matter of time and further growth until you need more servers and the complexity of your systems grows even more. At this point, you'll need regular help and support to keep the systems running. If you go down the path of hiring someone to support this environment, it may work cost-effectively for you. However, any individual has limitations and blind spots when it comes to technology and supporting all aspects of it for a business.

It is very important that non-technical people running a business seek advice from technical experts in their field. The real problem is this – how do you know that the people you are talking to as technical experts are really experts in your scale of business? IT is definitely not a one solution fits all type affair.

In fact, for one business in one industry, the required technology can change as the business grows. Now, with options in the cloud and on the ground, it is important to know:
1. How solutions fit now and give a good return on investment (ROI); and
2. How they will work for you in a couple of years time when your company has grown.
With 10 staff, you may get a great ROI on hosted email, but at 20 it may make sense to run your own mail server until you get to 60 staff, at which point it may be better to go to a larger-scale hosted solution.

I mentioned before that your IT guy may be isolated in your business, and this is something that often surprises business owners who are not technical. They hire someone to solve the IT issues, and he knows more about IT than anyone in the business, so he arrives and is instantly the hero, the savior and the expert. He is hired because he knows how to work with what is in place, or what is needed next, possibly because he's had the right experience somewhere else.

But, soon enough, he will need ongoing training and exposure to the latest technology so that he can bring that back into your business. Leaving him at his desk answering emails, phone calls and screams for help is only a short-term solution to your IT problems. Bringing in the relevant experts to run projects and assist your IT guy needs to be part of your ongoing solution to IT management within a progressive business.

It doesn't matter what size your business is – you need to work with the right technology partners and advisors to get current advice that is relevant to you. Some guy who has a sophisticated corporate IT job, and plays with PCs on the weekend, probably has no idea what will work best in your business. Finding trusted advisors who have their finger on the pulse of the IT industry is key to the future success of your business.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Do we need a structured IT policy for our company?

This is actually an HR question, not a systems question, but it somehow always falls to the IT department to answer because they're the experts in regards to the risks associated with this area of the business.

Essentially, it should be up to the IT department to work with the HR department to ensure the right policies are in place for your IT systems.

There are a number of risks inherent to your business IT systems that locking down computers can limit – but not really remove.

Some of these risks are:

• Loss of data through deletion and corruption.
• Data theft.
• Leaking of information protected by the Privacy Act, confidentiality requirements or expectations.
  
• Exposing staff to indecent media (text, sound or graphics).
  
• Inappropriate use of company equipment and resources including:
  
  • Downloading of illegal or inappropriate material
  • Downloading of bulk materials (known as leaching)
  • Distribution of spam
  • Use of stolen or pirated software
  • Distribution of stolen or pirated software
  • Hosting of inappropriate material for download
  • Forwarding of illegal actions (hackers like to hide behind other identities).
• Activating viruses on inappropriate websites by initiation of web scripts.

Unfortunately, this list goes on and on. Many of these risks can be mitigated with good use of security systems within your organisation, but not all of them can be prevented or detected without significant expense. With a strong IT policy in place, staff can be encouraged to not deliberately embark on these activities, and – if caught – can be strongly disciplined or, if necessary, removed from the company.

IT policy can also be used to set expectations about who owns the data stored on the systems, and who owns any IP created or stored on the systems.

I've seen many examples of IT policy being required by a range of companies. One such example was a case where staff were downloading videos using torrent software, and ran up a bill for many thousands of dollars before being found out.

I've also seen employees downloading and running pirated software to "get a job done" when the required software was not made available to them. The employees were thinking "get the job done, don't spend money", but management were oblivious to the risks this exposed the company to. Good systems monitoring may have prevented both issues, but clear policy can deter staff from embarking on the wrong path.

You may not need a policy in a small company if you think you know your staff well. However, think about it like this – an IT policy:

• Is easy to introduce;
• Turns management's expectations into clear communication (never a bad thing), and;
• Can save you if there is ever an unexpected breach.

If you work with a good IT advisor, they should have templated policy documents. I recommend that as a good place to start.

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Is it time to update our systems?

In my experience, people in business know when they need new IT systems but lack the technical nous to explain why, and the IT / business skills to justify the additional expense.

So, when it feels bad they spend a little bit of money to try and speed up the system to make the bad feeling go away. When this fails, they feel even worse about the money wasted and stick their head in the sand hoping they don't have to spend more soon.

So, it's the new financial year, and like every other year, you've probably failed to budget for IT and you know your systems are failing your business. You also know that you can't blame anybody for this situation. You made a small profit last year, but you have to hang onto it to get through the tough times we all know lie ahead before the financial storm is over. You can even remember a time before the financial storm, when IT was hard to justify spending money on, and now you are really suffering because of the poor planning and decisions you made back then.

There are a lot of reasons why old computers slow down. Of course, there is some stuff that can be done to make them limp a bit quicker, but we all know the real solution is to give them the bullet and move to new equipment – set up and fine-tuned to work better than the old stuff.

So how do you move from here to where you need to be?

First of all, stop spending money on your current systems. You're probably throwing away good money. Assess how much you are spending on the systems you have, and on keeping them running. Here is the hard part – I want you to include the cost of downtime by multiplying the number of staff you have by the number of hours of down time by the average salary or your hourly charge rate if you know it. Also include the cost of services you are using to remedy the IT problems.

If your computers are not crashing, but are just slow, try to figure out how many hours a week are being wasted by how many people. And, if there are things you just can't do, figure out what it would be worth to your business if you could do them.

This will help you establish a budget. If you are spending nothing and there is nothing to save, you need to reach deeper to find the budget.

Think about it like this though – how many staff are you likely to upset and lose if you do not update your systems? How many prospective clients will you miss out on? How many existing ones will you lose? Can you track billable hours of your staff better to recoup more fees or can you get more stock turns through better inventory management? Keep thinking about why you use computers, and where they can return on your investment.

Specifically, ask yourself:

• What are the must-have improvements you need?
• What will generate the most profitable results?
• What will improve efficiency the most or reduce lag times the most?
• Can you account for more services or stock?
• Can you improve margins or improve services?
  What will you need to achieve this?

Start with the software you need to achieve the outcome, then move onto the hardware to support it, and finally find a services team that will make it all work for long enough to give you the return on investment.

If you need help with any part of this journey, find a trusted advisor who can help you understand your business from an IT perspective and develop the right plan to move forward so you can stop wasting money on the wrong solutions or resources, and start investing in a profitable future.

And, remember, now's the time to do it – take advantage of the ever so low interest rates, lock in a lease and invest in new systems. There is a good chance it will put you ahead of your competition when the financial climate improves.

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

We are not sure if IT is creating value in our business. How do we know?

In any business, there are essentially three perceptions of IT expenditure:
1. A necessary evil that we spend money on when we have to.
2. A business tool that we spend money on to stay in the game.
3. A tool that provides competitive advantage that we invest heavily in.

The category you're in is a big part of deciding whether IT is creating value. Often, businesses that do not perceive value in IT are either:

• Not investing enough to get any value; or
• Fundamentally lack a plan for the investment they're making, so spend inefficiently and do and re-do work on IT, without deriving the available benefit.

So, which category are you in?

If you don't need IT in your business, then please excuse yourself at this point. Clearly this article does not apply to you, as you either have no staff or have outsourced all your financial management, BAS statement generation, payroll, stock management, time management, communications, and so on. Well done, but move along.

If IT is a necessary evil for your business, and if you're not getting value from it, what does it do for you, and why are you investing in it at all? What other areas of your business could it manage for you, and how could you use it better to help your business grow? Have you mastered eMarketing, social media, the web? Could you manage your resources of stock or time better? Could you track clients, or complaints, or project delivery better?

I've seen a company that assembles machines used for commercial cleaning employ multiple staff in an assembly process. They don't use inventory management on a computer, but they tell me they really don't have much need for fancy IT systems. Unfortunately, they couldn't see that keeping track of their parts electronically, and scanning new deliveries into location bins with the number of items, would speed up the tracking of parts available for assembling units – and improve the just-in-time delivery of additional components, before stock was exhausted. Now, if carrying $2 million in parts is your way of ensuring your labour force is never idle, don't sweat the IT system. But, if you want to cut the investment in stock by 50% to 75%, you will get a very snappy return on your investment in software and a barcode reader.

You need to look closely at your business, and determine what value IT delivers to your business. If you turned off your computers, what would go wrong and how much would it cost you? Why? What are the greatest costs in your business or the greatest losses?

In my business, one of the greatest sources of loss occurs when my technicians fail to account for an hour of work done. When they don't account for it, the client gets a gift and we lose the opportunity to bill for the effort – while we still have to pay the salary. So, it's in our best interests to invest and make it easy for our technicians to account for their time. For a construction company, the investment needs to be able to manage contractors and employees, and communicate quickly and effectively when changes are required.

If you don't know where the value of IT is for your business, and you fail to invest, chances are your competitors will be able to do things at a better rate, or with a better outcome than you can. Today, as every business globally becomes more competitive, this just isn't viable. As technology is more pervasive than ever before and more easily accessed from mobile tools, the gap between those who use technology to get ahead and those who don't, is increasing.

If you're not sure about the value IT is creating for your business, find a trusted advisor who really sees where you could benefit and get them to work with you to develop a cost benefit analysis that helps you justify the expense. Then, ensure the IT strategy is in-line with your business plans, and build a budget to meet the needs of your business.

Most importantly:

• Avoid spending on IT until you know what the return will be, and why you need to spend.
• BUT, don't make the mistake of avoiding spending on IT. It may leave you behind your competitors – and cost you your business.

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

We can't add new staff because our current IT systems can't cope. Help!

In small business, we often forget to plan as we are too busy with the day-to-day activities involved in delivering our product or service. I’m a big fan of planning in business, because if you’re going to run a business that grows beyond the micro level, it will involve many people over time. To keep people working effectively, there needs to be a degree of planning.

Planning for your business should be reflected in an IT plan to ensure your costs are anticipated and budgeted. Rapid growth is good, but when it’s impeded by underperforming or under-specified IT solutions, it can be very costly to your productivity or quality of delivery. Fancy losing clients because your business could not add the staff fast enough to deliver a quality product or service.

Areas that you should cover in your IT capacity planning include:

• Server storage space (hard drives to store data)
• Licensing (many programs lock out additional staff when limits are reached)
• Server speed (many factors can effect server performance)
• Hard Drive Speeds
• Number and speed of processors
• Memory (RAM) capacity and speed
• Number of users being supported
• Number of applications per server
• Quality of server equipment (age, transfer speeds etc)
• Tuning of applications and operating system
• Number of PCs or terminals available
• Internet bandwidth for accessing web-based or external office based information or applications
• Quality of internal and private networks
• Capacity of backup systems to protect all data and systems information
• Power to run and cool the systems
• Cooling capacity
• Physical space in the server room

Often these simple planning aspects are overlooked. Take, for example, a real estate agent who opens a site office on a local development project, and a branch office five kilometers down the road. He has a combination of web-based tools and in-house server-based systems that his 35 staff already use. Now, he has three PCs required in the site office, and they need to be laptops so that they can be taken off site each night, as security is a concern. He also needs five attractive PCs for the branch office, which is a modern showroom environment to bring people in off the street to browse properties on clean, new screens.

The head office internet connection is okay for the current use of web-based applications, but will not support all the remote staff accessing the server-based applications. It also won’t support the IP-based phone calls between the offices. The servers in the office also need additional licenses, and possibly an upgrade to one of the servers is in order. All of this could have been planned as part of opening new offices, but instead has been left until staff in the new locations are disgruntled and feel like second-class citizens.

Do people who feel like second-class citizens make the best representatives for your company?

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

How can I make sure my IT people are strong in all of the right technologies?

In small businesses, I often find people who look after their own computers, or have staff who are responsible for looking after the computers in their "spare time". While a business is in the micro stage, using what is essentially home computer technology, this can work. But, as a business grows, more help is required as systems take on new dimensions. Staff become busier, and simply don't have the time or expertise required to cope with greater complexity as new servers are added, phone systems are thrown into the mix, and so on.

As a business continues to grow, yet more technologies are added and business systems become even more complex. These technologies include: internet security, printing, servers for multiple tasks, remote access devices, mobile phones, email servers, and more.

Pretty soon it takes a wide variety of skills to support just one office of staff. Very quickly, a single internal or external resource becomes stretched as they try to master all the different technologies.

Think about it this way – if you were to send one of your team to training on Microsoft servers, Email servers, Firewalls, Printers, Server hardware, Virtualisation platforms, PCs, Windows 7, VOIP phone systems, and all the other key applications in your business, you could have them out of the office for 30 to 50 days each year just to stay up-to-date!

Yet, it is common for small businesses to expect one person to pick all of this stuff up on the fly, and work across multiple levels of the IT environment. Check out poor Bree's all-too-familiar comment on one of my earlier blogs here.

So, this is not a training problem – it is a breadth problem. Symptoms of a breadth problem include:

• Running a sub-standard email system that does not offer shared calendars or shared public folders.
• Not running an intranet to share company information.
• Poor filtering of spam and viruses.
• No firewalls, or firewalls that are too old to defend against modern threats.
• Developing an in-house database to solve a small business problem (it's usually better to source an off-the-shelf product with no hidden costs).
• Poor backup systems that have not been tested for data recoverability.
• No off-site backup for disaster recovery.
• Running old versions of operating systems that are at end of life.
• Aging PCs and Servers (more than four years old).
• High numbers of servers relative to staff, needing high levels of attention.
• Regular outages of critical systems.
• Slow performance of business systems.
• Slow response to technical issues once they arise.

All of the above problems may occur to a greater or lesser extent even on a well-managed network. It's how many that arise, and how often, that will lead to you requiring a broader solution. I suggest you think about it like this – when IT gets to a point where it is IMPEDING the growth of your business, you should look for a team of people who have current training in the relevant technologies, and a training plan to ensure they stay up-to-date. If you're at this point now, there are two options:

1. Hire new staff and set up your own training regime; or
2. Find a trusted advisor with a team of technical resources you can tap into, as you require them.

There are many Managed Services Providers (MSPs) around Australia who offer such services, and can step in directly or remotely to solve many issues promptly. In MSPs, it is not uncommon to send each staff member to five to 10 days of training each year, and to spread the training load across the whole team to ensure a great breadth of knowledge is held and skills are kept up-to-date.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.