My server is dying, should I go cloud?

This is the question we're being asked every other day at the moment. Each time we're asked, we take our time and do the analysis required for the particular services being offered.

As you might remember, I recently wrote about how developers want us to move to the cloud. The issue, though, for each small or medium business is that the cost of hosted infrastructure is typically higher than the cost of a local server over a three-year period. Typically, the hosted solution also has a subset of the functionality of the local version, so careful comparisons must be made.

If you're looking at utility-scale solutions (such as the Microsoft BPOS solution) for your email and share point, you may find costs are advantageous due to the scale of the offering.

Keep in mind that I'm not referring to those more mature offerings; I'm talking about the hosted line of business applications that are industry specific and developed by smaller software houses. These companies have not yet moved their hosting platforms to the likes of Azure, and are currently hosting their own small-scale offerings in private data centres. These companies need to get a quick ROI on the investment they're made on infrastructure, and – quite frankly – they're nervous, as they've invested to write code that is cloud ready, and in infrastructure that has a limited shelf life.

So, the developers want to get a payback on the investment they've made, and fair enough too. Chances are that within a year or two, the big hosters will host the minor applications, and prices will come down significantly or the smaller providers will gain scalability and have cashflow to fund the continuous scaling up of their hosted offerings. If it not yet clear which way it will go, but it is clear prices will come down quickly as more people adopt the cloud solutions.
So, how do we decide today which solution to adopt?

The answer lies in functionality, TCO, complexity of your business topology and personal preference. If you have just one site for your business, cloud is not a huge benefit other than for your backup. Put in a local Small Business Server, and get on with your work. However, if you have multiple sites, there are more benefits in going cloud.

It is also important to consider the ongoing cost of maintaining your infrastructure of servers. Until you have a fixed price maintenance plan for your servers, it's very hard to compare the costs of maintenance of the cloud-based solution versus the local solution.

Some of the costs you need to compare are:

• License fees
• Hardware capital costs
• Hardware warranties
• Application administration
• Server administration
• Application support
• Server support
• Broadband fees
• Backup and recovery system costs
• Management of all of the above

Clearly, now is a time when investment should be made in analysis to determine the best path forward. In 12 to 24 months time, as the functionality of cloud-based solutions improves, bandwidth costs drop, infrastructure costs drop and more businesses adopt the cloud, the analysis will not be as important as the solution will be more obvious.

I realise I've not yet discussed security, sovereignty of data and other cloud-related issues around who owns the data and how well protected it is. So, there is clearly more to discuss. Of course, all of this is to be expected in the midst of a technology revolution.

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

Is IT support about people or technology?

This is a question that is often overlooked, yet should be addressed. It could also be posed as: What does emotional intelligence (EQ) have to do with IT support?

Unfortunately, the answer given to this question is typically: Not much. Which partly explains why technicians are often so hard to understand. Clearly, there is a shortage of EQ rather than IQ in the industry and hence the need for a renewed focus on developing EQ.

The challenge is that most technical staff, from the lowest level tech to the department manager, have no interest in EQ – let alone understand it – despite the fact that our industry of service provision is far more about dealing with people than it is about dealing with technology.

Let me explain what I mean.

As there are now so many answers to technical questions available on the web, support is more about communicating with people to help diagnose issues than it is about technology. In fact, acting as the interface between people and their technical problems is where technicians can add most value. So, as workplaces become more demanding of these soft skills, it is more important than ever for technicians to understand how to interact with people.

Unfortunately, as technology becomes ever more complicated with greater choice of tools for each business function (including traditional and cloud-based solutions), the training load on each technician can make the job of IT support seem insurmountable. EQ is therefore the last thing on their minds.

But to cope with this increased complexity, technicians now must be able to balance people and their expectations. For example, explaining succinctly why the simple solution they came back with after two hours of research was not immediately obvious when they took the question. Like so many aspects of holistic support, this requires high EQ.

Be warned – if nobody is working on EQ with the technical people that support your organisation, you’ll either get poor delivery of service or a team of very stressed technicians.

So, the question back to you as a business leader is: What are you doing to improve the EQ of your technical team?

The following link will take you to a TED video presentation by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They talk about how they encourage people to work on the things they want to work on to drive innovation in small teams.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sergey_brin_and_larry_page_on_google.html

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

Has the virus threat died off yet?

I would love to tell you it's now safe to install your anti-virus software and leave it to tick away on auto update to keep your computers safe.

Unfortunately, it's just not true. As per usual, we need to do all the technical stuff in the background; but, we also need to train our staff so they know what to avoid.

Prompted by this week's question and my own team of techs, I've been urged to spread the message about fake anti-virus programs that pose a real threat.

Trojan viruses are getting into our PCs and running a message that says something along the lines of, '235 files scanned. Viruses found, please purchase the full version to remove all infections.'

These messages vary, as there are many different styles of attack. Here are a few we've seen:

So, if you're prompted to download any anti-virus software, think twice, ask your IT people if you should, and don't put your credit card details into any website unless you know it's a reputable brand and you went to the site directly (not off a link you were sent).

Of course, every business should have a strategy for managing anti-virus software that includes keeping a sound product installed, licensed and regularly updated.

Typical costs are only a few dollars a month, while the cost of virus removal can be many hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It's also important to train your staff on the type of threats to avoid, and have company policies on your intranet or in a manual that ensure staff understand their responsibility when it comes to following links on a screen.

Good IT managers or advisors will have standard policy documents to offer you, as it's the role of the IT department to provide such advice and knowledge.

Don't get complacent on virus protection as the risk is high, the probability of high-cost impact is high, and it is better to prevent than to repair or rebuild. Stay clean, stay safe, and protect your data.

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