My Client’s Advocate

With all the advertising and sales pitches that we come across these days it is not wonder we are all confused. Sometimes we ‘settle’ for things just because it is easier and less stressful to ‘settle’ for something that is close to what we want instead of finding that person that can an advocate for them. Do you have someone like this in your life? To some it is a board of directors. To others it is their spouse or mentor.

I named my company, “Make My Technology Simple” because before I started the actual company and was doing it part time, I was always hearing from my clients how I made things so simple for them. They never walked away in a daze because I talked over their heads. I would tell them about what they needed in a new PC or server and why, in terms that they understood. I also told them why others told them differently.

I guess I am kind of a rare breed of business owner. I put my clients first. Instead of going for that quick fix and moving on, I spend time with them. Find out what they really need and want. Do they truly understand the consequences of buying new or staying with what they have.

A lot of my clients are one time consultations. I resolve their problems in a permanent way. I spend a little time instructing them on how not to get back into the situation that they found themselves. Sometimes it is simply telling a client that downloading music files from a file sharing site is almost a guaranteed way of getting a virus. Now, what is more economic to you? Download a free song and get a virus and a bill from me for $150? Or buy songs from approved of sites for .99 or $1.99 each and not see me at all? You can get 70-150 songs for the price of me removing a free virus!

So I try to be an advocate to my clients so that we put the right combination of software and hardware together for their company’s needs and the client now can concentrate on working their business and not having downtime or added costs because of viruses or mismatched systems.

The FAQ on UPS’ (Uninterrupted Power Supply) and their batteries

Here is an FAQ from one of my vendors on Backup Batteries. You will notice that one of the questions is how long do the batteries last? The answer is 2-3 years under the proper conditions.

A lot of my clients bought UPS’ back in 1999 when they were upgrading their computers/networks in preparation for the Y2k bug. Like a lot of things, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it applies to UPS’ too.

If your UPS beeps and all the lights are on and don’t flash, then the chances are that your battery is dead. I have to tell them that UPS’ are like insurance, you don’t need them until you ‘NEED’ them!

Take a read on the following FAQ and if YOU have questions, please send them on to me. I love answering questions!

UPS Battery Maintenance

Sealed Lead Acid Batteries (SLA) are considered maintenance free, however they do discharge if they are not charged monthly.
UPS Battery Charging

Sealed Lead Acid Batteries are the best technology available today for UPS applications, however they must be properly charged at all times to perform effectively in UPS applications.

Common UPS battery charging problems are overvoltage and exposure to excess heat that can come from dense server room environments, etc. UPS devices should be properly ventilated to cool them, to prolong battery life and overall battery performance.
Battery Life

In terms of years of service, sealed lead acid UPS batteries properly maintained may perform satisfactory for as long 2-3 years, this is subject to variation that depends on actual UPS environment operating conditions, and the number of discharge / recharge cycles their UPS experiences.

In a UPS application that cycles over to battery power on a monthly basis, and is kept in a stable temperature environment under 85 degrees Fahrenheit, UPS batteries should last 2-3 years before performance begins to deteriorate. If the UPS is loaded beyond 75%, or the UPS kicks over to battery more than once a month, you may want to replace batteries annually or every two years to ensure maximum runtime and overall performance.
Battery Runtime

UPS Battery runtime is determined by 2 basic factors; the amount of actual UPS battery storage capacity and the actual amount of power load the UPS. Most UPS applications perform best with 50% or lower load in terms of runtime. Depending on the UPS make model, some UPS manufacturer’s offer solutions adding additional battery packs can extend that, but beyond 30 minutes of runtime, a generator solution usually makes the most sense.
What is an SLA Battery?

SLA Batteries are Sealed Lead Acid Batteries, non-spillable and maintenance free.

Are You Ready?

Are you Ready…?
Summer is coming to a close. Our kids are getting ready to go back to school. We are thinking about the last summer holiday, Labor Day which is fast approaching!
What is not on our minds (and should be) is that it is still hurricane season. Our second named hurricane, Danielle was just downgraded from a category 2 to a category 1 hurricane and will most likely turn in a more north-northeast direction.
Hurricane season in the Atlantic begins June 1st and ends November 30th. NOAA has predicted another 9 named storms before the season ends. Surely with that many possible storms, we will feel the effects of at least one before the end of the season.
So my question remains. Are you ready?
I can rattle off meaningless statistics about how we are due for a big one, but unless Fire Island is submerged and Freeport’s main street has 3 feet of water, we tend not to take notice or even think about what we might need in case we are hit.
So for all my readers, here on 516ads.com, I just say to you, when you have a moment, go to www.ready.gov and check out the information that they have there for you.
And like my buddies in the Fire Service say, you need to have a plan and practice it. So with Danielle most likely a memory, why not take a look at the sight and see what you need. In most cases, we will be just bulking up on commonly used items, like bottled water and batteries. In other cases, you will be surprised when you can’t find documentation that you thought was right there in your filing cabinet.
Let’s hope and pray that Danielle and her 9 friends all fizzle out and we can concentrate on our families and businesses.
But, let’s also make sure that ‘We are Ready!’

Rich Schierer is President & Founder of Make My Technology Simple, a full service Information Technology Solutions provider. He is a member of the local chapter of the Association of Contingency Planners.
If you have any questions or comments, please direct them to him at rich@makemytechnologysimple.com

Technology Pain Points – How Long Can You Endure Them?

Do you know how much a slow, under-performing PC costs you each day/week?

A Large percentage of my business is from repeat customers, with re-occurring problems, that slow their businesses down.

Let’s take a look at two ‘Offices’. Which of the following two scenarios is your office?

Office A

10 PCs running Windows XP Pro, w/ ~2GB RAM, 2-3 servers running Windows 2003/2008 Oses, running managed services on all PCs and servers. All issues are resolved pro-actively. Microsoft Security Patching and Anti-virus updates and scans are run and monitored. Connected to the internet via cable. IT support costs are fixed, leaving your IT staff or consultant to work with you to improve processes.

Office B

10 PCs running Windows XP Pro or Vista, w/ less than 2GB RAM, 2-3 servers running NT/2000 Server. No managed services. No remote monitoring, no remote access. All issues are resolved after the fact (reactively) and at a premium rate, Microsoft Security Patching is off, PC/Server has not had updates since… ??? Status of your antivirus updates and scans is also unknown (who is responsible for this?) Internet access is wide open and not only do your employees have the ability to surf the web, but hackers have access to your private company files (they do???!!) IT Support costs are out of hand, you have to reboot PCs and servers more than once a day. ( You do know how to reboot a server, don’t you?) You have a high turnover rate of IT staff (if you even have someone at all, who is responsible for this??)

So? Which office is yours? Or which one has more of one than it should?

Enter managed services. Office A has managed services and there was no mention of rebooting PCs or servers. Nor a mention of hackers (but sadly hackers are still a problem).

So what are managed services you ask? We load a small program on your PC/Server and let it run. This ‘agent’ collects only information about the workings of the hardware and software. What you have, what you don’t have. When a problem occurs (and no you weren’t alerted to it because you don’t have this type of system or an IT staff to do it for you), an alert is sent to the monitoring station (in IT terms it is called a NOC Network Operations Center) which in turn creates a trouble ticket that is either resolved immediately or is sent on to a tech who will be on-site in the morning.

What kind of problems do managed services resolve? For one, problems are solved before ‘You’ the business owner or even end user know about it. Now that end user, your employee does not have to reboot their PC a few times a day.

And now back to my opening statement about ROI, how do we calculate that?

If one end user has to reboot twice a day (2) and it takes 10 minutes, that means that your employee was sitting idle for 20 minutes a day, times 5 days a week equals 100 minutes or almost 2 hours a week. Now how much do you pay that employee a week? Multiply that times how many employees you have. OK now you have lost time/money due to rebooting. Add the same amount of time/money to that to show how much ‘productivity’ you lost. And finally, add the number of minutes/hours lost due to employees not getting back to work right away.

Managed services are all the range now as they are a great solution to a lot of issues that plague companies. They are used by some of the bigger companies because they have to show productivity gains and that is done by getting more use out of every person and piece of equipment.

And now the bad part,,, (yeah you knew it was coming!) the price. Now that you have a ballpark number in your head about how much you are losing to non productive equipment, we can use it against what managed services will cost you.

$15/PC per month, $35/server per month. Take that number and subtract it from the one above, of course make sure that your lost is showing how much a month you are losing. If the resulting number is a positive that would be the price you would be saving each month. If the resulting number is a negative, well then your systems are running better than most and I congratulate you! So! Now we can talk about getting other processes running better! You do have a business continuity plan in place, don’t you???

Richard W. “Rich” Schierer aka MyIT GuyOnLI is President & owner of Make My Technology Simple

You can find him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, at the company website www.makemytechnologysimple.com or call him at 631.375.4512 to discuss what managed services can do for your company’s performance or any other computer/network issue.

Security, are your systems protected?

Everyday you hear on the radio or TV, or read it in the papers or internet, that the security of your desktop computer or laptop running Windows XP or Vista or Microsoft network is getting harder and harder to keep up with. Hackers and viruses and spam and trojans and worms and downtime OH MY! Sometimes you might think that the Wizard of Oz is protecting (or not!) your systems!

Antivirus software doesn’t do it all any more. Now you need a combination of that and antimalware. And you have to keep up on those too! Long gone are the days of turning on the computer and having an interesting surf thru cyber-space!

But the end is not in sight my friends! At least not for securing your computers and networks! If you do the numbers, it costs less to have an experienced, trained professional come in and secure your network and computers.

Let me ask you this… “How much do you think it costs you on a daily basis to have problematic computers and networks vs having a professional secure and configure your networks and computers properly?”.

Let’s say you have 5 computers running Microsoft Windows XP Pro and one server running Microsoft Windows Server 2003. If each person loses 15 minutes a day because their computers froze and they had to reboot to get back to work. Now multiply that by a weekly time loss of 5 computers x 15 minutes loss per day x 5 days = 375 minutes a week or 6 hours 15 minutes. Multiply that times their billable rate $100/hour (if you are a law, accounting or health care firm you are billing at a much higher rate) and you now find that you are loosing $625 per week (or $2500 per month) in billable time to computers freezing up or running slow.

Now bring in the computer professional who will clean up all your problems and create a proactive approach to your support consisting of a visit once a week, plus managed services, plus off-site backup and your monthly cost is way less to have a properly configured, secured and running computer network. Fees vary depending on your location but here on Long Island, NY you are looking at approximately $1000 per month.

And that includes supporting the server also! And we didn’t even get into your company data being protected. What if the server goes down????