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By the DynaSis Team

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—a cloud computing solution wherein a firm’s data servers and other related resources reside in an offsite data center rather than at the organization’s physical location—is fast becoming a solution of choice among modern businesses. Servers no longer need to be physical boxes, sitting in a server closet at the office. Thanks to virtualization, a server can reside anywhere, with secure access to it provided over a high-speed Internet connection. In most cases, firms can pay to have their own, discrete server hosted at the data center, or they can lease a server allocation carved from a much higher-capacity storage device that is shared by multiple companies yet isolated and secured through software from intrusion.

With IaaS, hosting companies provide, not only the storage space itself, but also the operating system and any necessary hardware to make the server secure and functional. IaaS providers also handle server maintenance and monitoring, as well as backup and sometimes administration. These virtual servers can host not only a firm’s data but also its email systems and most, if not all, of its software and other computing resources.

With IaaS, companies pay for the server space and related operations through an ongoing weekly, monthly or yearly fee. They don’t own the physical hardware, so the cost is an operating expense rather than a capital expense. IaaS platforms are highly scalable, so allocations can be adjusted up or down on demand.

Adopting IaaS offers companies numerous benefits, not the least of which is the elimination of hardware and operating system acquisition, management and maintenance. IaaS also reduces the IT burden associated with owning server hardware and eliminates the possibility of a server outage. (Servers can and do crash in data centers, of course, but hosting providers have built-in redundancy and failover programs that ensure continuity of service even in the event of a server crash.) Most providers guarantee uptime of 99.999% (“five nines”), which is 5.26 minutes of downtime, per year.

Research firms such as Yankee Group report that IaaS brings companies numerous benefits beyond hardware/software savings and capacity management. Other benefits include greater resiliency (disaster recovery/business continuity), more effective resource utilization (firms pay only for the server space they need), and sheer convenience, since business leaders and their workers can access corporate data and applications from any Internet-connected location.

Furthermore, many companies report that IaaS enhances both worker productivity and business innovation, often significantly. IaaS expedites communication and collaboration, even among remote workers. It is a key driver of mobility, which has long been proven to boost employee efficiency and satisfaction.

For the business leader, the time, money and energy not spent on making technology purchase and management decisions, as well as hiring and managing technology staff, can be diverted to business growth. Finally, the ability to expand server capacity on demand lets firms grow their resources quickly for special projects, product development and other needs, making them more competitive and willing to pursue innovative ideas.

In fact, an Oxford Economics survey found that 36 percent of responding firms adopted cloud solutions such as IaaS, not based on the traditional drivers such as cost savings and resiliency, but rather for their innovation benefits. Per the report, the transformation brought about by IaaS and other cloud solutions is “fundamentally altering business processes, [bringing] incredible opportunities, including the ability to build a real-time enterprise where interaction and innovation flourish." We couldn’t agree more.

About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.

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By the DynaSis Team

Every day, business leaders—or their employees or vendors—engage in a variety of activities to keep the business running. Does that mean every single one is beneficial? Before you answer, consider this.

There are plenty of activities, such as firing a problematic worker who wasn’t properly vetted or repairing a PC that was inadequately maintained, that keep a business running only because they fix problems that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place. In addition, vendors, employees and even business leaders all engage in activities that don’t really do anything but waste time or money.

So, how does a business evaluate whether activities are beneficial or not? We believe there are four key criteria that can determine whether or not an activity has merit within the organization:

• Lowering costs
• Increasing productivity
• Minimizing risk
• Driving growth

These are the “lowest common denominators” of business success. Any activity that is not doing one of these things may be keeping your business running, but it isn’t improving your operation or making it more competitive. At the end of the day, improvement, and not status quo, is what leads to long-term success.

The question then becomes, how can you evaluate your business activities and eliminate the ones that don’t provide one of these four benefits? Cutting away the dead wood and the fat is a process that takes time and reflection. It isn’t immediate, but it can really strengthen your business.

Ask key employees and stakeholders to look for activities or actions that aren’t providing one of these four benefits and then explore how they developed. If it’s a wasteful activity that slipped in unnoticed, stop it. If the activity became necessary due to another problem (like a PC repair caused by inadequate maintenance, in our example), making resolution of that issue a priority. Then, start looking again.

You’ll find areas to improve throughout the business, and we have a few to suggest for technology.

1. Implement virtualization (discussed in our last blog). You will reduce your server and desktop count, save money and energy, and reduce IT management and maintenance.
2. Put a secure, properly managed mobile device in the hands of every worker. It’s a proven fact that mobility increases productivity. There are other ways, as well, but that’s one of the fastest approaches.
3. Take a hard look at your business continuity/disaster recovery plans. It amazes us how many businesses discover they really need “flip the switch” data recovery only after they experience a major outage and lose business as a result. Don’t let your company be one of them.
4. Reduce IT complexity. One of the leading drivers of business growth is innovation, and one of the number one barriers to innovation is IT complexity. If your company is operating with a mashup of hardware, software, storage and other solutions, perhaps cobbled together into a pseudo-custom platform, you are likely engaged in an endless cycle of integration, configuration, tuning and testing. Resolve to untangle the web, now.

Last, don’t let your busy schedule prevent you from starting this initiative. In the time it took you to read this article, you could have identified the personnel that will help you in this task and gotten them started finding areas for improvement.

About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.

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By the DynaSis Team

For many small and midsized businesses (SMBs), having up-to-date technology means running Windows 7 or 8 and having servers and desktops that are only a few years old. That’s a good start, but there are many other modern technologies that businesses can implement to increase operating efficiency and productivity and drive business success.

One prime example is virtualization. With virtualization, a company’s data, applications, operating systems and other IT assets reside on a software-generated image of a hard drive, rather than on a physical server, personal computer or other computing device. Using this technique, one physical piece of hardware in an enterprise can host multiple virtual servers, desktops or storage devices. Virtual machines can also be hosted in the cloud, at data centers or through other cloud hosting providers.

Virtualization offers numerous benefits, including more efficient utilization of existing computing hardware. With each physical server that can be virtualized, it eliminates one more piece of hardware to be managed, maintained, repaired and replace. The result is reduced server maintenance cost and labor, lower capital and operating costs, and reduced energy and cooling costs. Virtualized servers, desktops and storage systems can also be created faster than the time it takes to acquire and provision a new piece of hardware, which increases operating agility.

In later 2013, the Blackstone Group released a study that found nearly 70 percent of SMBs using virtualization technologies were doing so to move servers from hardware to software, reducing server sprawl and its associated management and maintenance load. Despite these benefits, only 62 percent of SMBs surveyed indicated they were “comfortable” with virtualization technology.

Companies like DynaSis work to demystify virtualization technology for their customers, making it easier for them to make the move. Virtualization has reached market maturity, so although the technologies can continue improve, there is absolutely no risk with adopting virtualization when it is implemented properly.

Virtualization isn’t the only example of modernized infrastructure, of course. Two others are backup appliances, which afford business continuity and reduce downtime in the event of an outage, and mobile computers such as tablets, which empower remote workers with the ability to perform office functions, no matter where they are. Adoption of these technologies varies among SMBs, but there is no doubt that nearly every SMB has room to improve in its deployment and use of modernized technology.

The irony is that these technologies really can level the playing field for SMBs, and they often represent such a cost savings that they pay for themselves quickly—sometimes within months. The problem, of course, is that many small and midsized business leaders are so tied up with the daily press of business that they don’t have time to step back and explore the value these solutions bring.

We’ll be bringing you more information about beneficial, modernized technologies in the near future. We hope it helps you use technology more effectively for your business success.

About DynaSis
DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.

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In the daily rush of “important” business functions like sales, accounting and other hard-dollar activities, it’s easy for business owners to cross their fingers and dismiss disaster recovery and business continuity concerns, figuring that the odds are in their favor. After all, the Small Business Administration reports that only 25% of businesses that experience a disaster fail to reopen. Surely you will not be one of them, right?

The problem with such reasoning is that in today’s data-dependent business environment, “business continuity” doesn't mean keeping your business open after a disaster. True business continuity from a technology perspective means keeping your business and its digital assets functioning and available even during a minor IT disruption, and these are more frequent than you might think.

A 2013 Ponemon Institute survey of nearly 2,400 business continuity and IT professionals found that almost 70% of them anticipate a minor IT disruption (fewer than 20 minutes) over the next 24 months. (Approximately 23% of them expect to experience a major disruption―seven hours or more.)

Do you consider an outage of less than 20 minutes to be acceptable? Before you say yes, consider these scenarios. What if that outage happens when your sales manager is developing the most important proposal in your company’s history, and the file he or she has been working on for days is irretrievably lost?

What if your dependable, weekly backup solution did not happen to capture any of that work? Moreover, what if the IT outage is not minor, but rather, it involves a server crash or some other event that takes more than 20 minutes to resolve?

Do you have a plan to be up and running within minutes of the event, no matter what, perhaps with the help of cloud computing? Could you or your Managed IT Services provider restore that lost file―the one your newest, biggest customer is expecting by day’s end?

This may sound like an unlikely scenario, but it happens every day. In fact, unless you have redundant, cloud-based systems in place, your team is likely experiencing outages and data losses of which you are not even aware.

For example, are you aware of every occurrence where an employee experiences a file corruption―or accidentally deletes a file? Often, workers do not report these losses if they can hide them from their superiors, fearing retribution for careless behavior. Instead, time is wasted recreating the file, which drains productivity and erodes the bottom line.

In reality, the biggest “cost” of IT outages is not the time to diagnose problems, get systems back online, or purchase new hardware. The results gleaned from those surveyed IT professionals (whose jobs rely on having a good handle on this issue) found 75% of the costs from an IT outage, cyber attack or other IT-related problem are business-related―from productivity drains to loss of customer confidence, to cancelled or abandoned sales.

Understanding the true financial consequences of an IT disruption is vital to making meaningful risk calculations. We hope this information will help you do just that.

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By the DynaSis Team

BYOD―Bring Your Own Device, a program were employees use their own devices for work tasks, is moving from being an option to becoming a certainty. A 2015 report from research firm Tech Pro found that 60% of companies currently allow BYOD, with another 14% planning to do so, soon. A 2013 Gartner research survey predicted that by 2017, half of all employers would require employees to supply their own device for work purposes.

The reasoning is simple―not only does a firm save money when employees provide devices, but it also fosters greater employee satisfaction and work-related device usage. BYOD also drives innovation, not only because employees have access to work functions outside the office, but because firms that allow BYOD often reinvent their processes, adopting mobile-compatible apps for everything from timesheets to contact management and more.

Despite the benefits of BYOD, however, many problems that have plagued businesses for years―particularly security―continue to be concerns. In the Tech Pro survey, security was the number one reason companies reported as their reasoning not to allow BYOD.

Because of this consideration, we recommend firms approach BYOD like they should any other IT strategy―with proper evaluation and planning. It may be easy to say “yes” to employees regarding BYOD―or to do nothing and simply allow personal devices to creep onto the network―but neither of those approaches give businesses an optimal outcome.

Regarding security, advanced IT services providers such as DynaSis offer affordable mobile device management platforms (with IT support) that secure corporate access without restricting the user from enjoying the device, personally. These platforms include remote lock and wipe features and/or “find me” functions that help an employee recover a misplaced or stolen phone.

In the first instance, employees shouldn’t balk at remote lock and wipe―or any other access restrictions―on personal devices, provided it only impacts corporate data.

In the second example, most employees are grateful for locator solutions, since losing a mobile device or having one stolen and not recovered creates a financial burden on the owner.

As Gartner Vice President and distinguished analyst David Willis noted in the 2013 report, "We're finally reaching the point where IT officially recognizes what has always been going on: People use their business devices for non-work purposes," said Mr. Willis.

We couldn’t agree more, and provided that company leaders approach the effort with business (including security) focused planning and execution, we fully support BYOD. After all, if workers are going to sneak personal usage onto a business device, why not turn the tables and let them provide their device (with or without a subsidy) for business use?

An appropriate BYOD program has many elements, and we don’t have room to discuss them here. Furthermore, firms that implement BYOD should also develop the business case for their programs beforehand and make sure they’re extracting maximum benefit from BYOD.

We’ll save those discussions for a future article, and in the meantime, leave you to consider the statistics that clearly show BYOD is the future of business mobility.

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By the DynaSis Team

Productivity, one of the four essentials for a successful business in today’s competitive environment, can also be surprisingly elusive. Depending on which study you read, any number of stressors can reduce office productivity.

One study reports that travel problems―such as traffic and road construction―leaves more than a third of workers in such a state of stress that it impacts their productivity for hours. Another reports that 61 percent of workers find a noisy workplace or adjacent co-worker to be their productivity killer. Other productivity zappers are impromptu meetings (40 percent) or sitting next to the boss (38 percent). A small percentage of employees can even be distracted by street noise or slamming doors. Adding to the confusion, 27 percent of workers aren’t bothered by any of these issues and prefer working surrounded by various stimuli.

The point we gleaned from these divergent reports is that workers aren’t alike. Most can lose focus and productivity from some environmental variable, but it’s literally impossible to say one particular stressor is a culprit in all productivity losses. So, how is a business owner to foster the highest-possible level of productivity?

We believe the answer is flexibility. Current technology offers an affordable way for business owners to drive staff productivity through agility. Smartphones, tablets, laptops and secure Internet connections let employees set up a “personal workspace” (preferred by 86% of workers) wherever and whenever they want.

That agility and mobility is an important facet of office productivity, and here we found the reports are pretty consistent. One global survey largely sums it up, reporting that 65 percent of mobile device users say those devices, along with anytime/anywhere work flexibility, are key productivity drivers.

In other words, while the variables that reduce productivity are wildly divergent, one factor that definitely increases it is access to mobile technology. It’s not that every worker wants to work from home or the road. Rather, every worker should be empowered with the tools to work whenever and wherever they wish, from checking email at the coffee shop on the way to the office, to signing off on a procurement or work order while waiting for a meeting. They should also be given the IT services and IT supports to ensure those devices are functional, and that corporate data is secure.

Precisely because of technology, workloads no longer develop on a set schedule. Employees who can respond to this unpredictable environment quickly and easily, on their own terms, will be the most productive and least stressed. It’s that simple.

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By the DynaSis Team

Recently, we read that e-commerce giant Alibaba, in partnership with Xi’an International Medical Investment and DHC Software, is building the first “cloud hospital.” This doesn’t mean that patients will be “seeing” doctors or receiving treatment through the cloud, of course. Rather, the team aims to create a cloud-based hospital administration platform with the goal of improving the quality of medical care. How will the platform achieve its goal? By using the cloud to make it easier and faster for medical entities and their practitioners to manage individual patient cases and optimize treatment and outcomes.

In a statement, the group’s spokesperson cited numerous specific attributes of the cloud platform, including faster information sharing among hospitals, expedited services such as online appointment-setting and payments, and software analysis of patient medical records and family health histories for more accurate diagnoses.

This project, while in its early stages, indicates to us the extent to which cloud technology is almost fully integrated into our lives―and certainly, our futures. Recent statistics support this assertion. A 2015 State of the Cloud Report found that 82 percent of organizations are using the public cloud for at least some business functions, and 63 percent are running private clouds.

Those figures were gratifying to us, here at DynaSis, because we have been promoting the value of cloud computing for years. Provided that an enterprise works with a reputable, experienced IT company, the Cloud is no less secure than on-premise installations. In many cases, it is far more secure.

Properly configured, secured and managed with full IT support, cloud technology promotes the three pillars of technology for the modern business―mobility, availability and security. The first question, then, becomes, what is the right configuration for a particular business―public cloud, private cloud or hybrid cloud?

The survey we referenced above found that hybrid cloud technology is currently the preferred strategy among enterprises (future plans), at 82 percent. That represents a 12 percent increase over the 2014 report. Hybrid clouds, where a company distributes its workloads and data among both public and private cloud environments, is perceived as offering the best of two worlds.

With a public cloud, a company’s data may be stored in common databases with the data of other companies, or workloads may run over the same network. With a private cloud, even though the company may be sharing space at a data center with other companies, the cloud environment and network traffic are rigidly separated from that of other firms. A hybrid cloud unites these two aspects of the cloud, with some workloads running in a public cloud and others in a private one.

The distinctions between the three types of clouds―and the way in which workloads and data are distributed among public and private clouds in a hybrid environment―can be confusing and somewhat murky, so we will devote more articles to them at a later date. For now, the key takeaway is that even the most diligent companies are moving some of their assets or workloads to the cloud for the gains they reap in productivity, mobility, redundancy, risk reduction, ROI and other key metrics. If you haven’t poked your head into the cloud yet, we urge you to do so, soon.

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File sharing and synchronization between multiple devices have become near-necessities for most businesses in today’s corporate environment. Among the three IT “pillars” for business today―mobility, security and availability―two are strongly tied to company personnel having anytime, anywhere access to corporate files. That usually (but not always) means a move to cloud computing in some form, and for many firms, it increasingly means DropBox or Google Drive.

These solutions are easy and inexpensive to use, encouraging small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to take a benign view of them. In companies without a formalized file sharing and syncing system, many employees adopt Dropbox or Google Drive (or both) on their own, outside the corporate structure but with corporate files stored on them.

This is a simple answer to a problem, but it’s not the most secure or efficient one. Here are just a few of the many concerns:

• Third-party file storage runs on a large public cloud, and as a result is generally riskier than other forms of cloud storage. This is especially true of the “consumer-grade” forms of cloud storage, which may offer fewer security protections than their enterprise counterparts.
• If users store their passwords for personal cloud storage on improperly secured mobile devices, the problem becomes even bigger.
• When employees store corporate files on a non-corporate resource, they are likely causing them to become out of sync with other circulating versions and potentially inaccessible to other personnel in the company.
• Most of these providers don’t automatically backup user files in a way that makes them easily accessible for retrieval in the event of file corruption or accidental deletion.

Even one of these criteria should motivate business owners to shut down use of personal cloud storage at the office, yet it continues to proliferate. Prudent business owners will deploy an enterprise-grade file storage/sharing/sync solution and develop a formal policy that requires its use.

However, resistance to change can be strong, so what can a firm do to persuade its personnel―and most importantly the mobile workforce―to drop kick Dropbox and other personal cloud storage to the curb, at least for corporate files? Here are a few suggestions.

• Include end users―especially respected “thought leaders” among the staff―by asking them what features matters to them and what challenges they would like to resolve. Then, do your best to address these requests or have a logical reason why you cannot. This will increase buy-in.
• Look for a solution that is fast and seamless―security features, in particular, shouldn’t slow down the workforce or you will get pushback.
• Focus on usability and utility to end-users during the trial. Once you’ve selected a solution, develop promotional messages that showcase user-requested features.

With so many enterprise-grade file storage/sharing/syncing offerings available, some solid research will help you find one that works for the business and its personnel. We’ve even seen storage-related IT services where corporate files remain on the office servers, but personnel can access and share them remotely through a cloud-based solution.

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By the DynaSis Team

In the past year, several reports have been published announcing that businesses are moving to the cloud for more than cost savings. The cloud is more secure than most on-premise systems, one report says. The cloud fosters greater workforce mobility and productivity, says another. A third touts the benefits of the cloud for increased system and data availability in the workplace.

All of these are valid, tangible benefits of cloud computing, and they also increase its financial benefit. Even so, it’s good to remember that no matter how many more benefits cloud computing offers; it remains an excellent cost-cutting strategy.

According to CDW’s 2013 State of the Cloud report (a survey of 1,242 IT professionals), companies are cutting costs in the cloud in numerous ways. According to the technology retailer’s survey, chief cost-related factors for moving to cloud computing include:

• Software management costs (65% of respondents)
• Software licensing costs (63% of respondents)
• IT labor costs (52% of respondents)
• Cost of capital outlays (41% of respondents)
• Electric bills for IT operations (21% of respondents)
• Real estate costs (12% of respondents)

Additionally, nearly 40% indicated senior company management was pushing for IT to shift expenses from capital (CapEx) to operating (OpEx), a strategy that correlates perfectly with cloud adoption.

Savings varies based on company size and level of cloud adoption, and migration project expenses can reduce cost savings for the first few months, or even a year. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that cloud adoption is a money-saving approach at the most basic level. When the value of increased efficiency/productivity gains (55% cited), employee mobility (49% cited), and ability to innovate (32% cited) are factored in, the savings is even greater.

As a leading IT solutions provider, DynaSis has been a believer in cloud services since the technology’s early days, and we remain committed to the future of this limitless technology. We also have a strategy for SMBs who wish to “dip their toes” into the cloud before embracing it fully, starting with hosted Microsoft Exchange or a professionally managed Office 365 deployment. No matter where you want the cloud to take you, we can assist. To learn more, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

As a company focused on IT solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), we generally think of risk reduction in terms of technology―either reducing the risk to the business if it experiences IT outages (for any reason) or reducing the risks if its security is breached. Nevertheless, we have always assumed that most businesses―and business writers―consider technology risk a part of the general topic of risk reduction and management.

While perusing the Internet recently, we were surprised to learn that many general risk reduction articles do not address technology, at all. We found discussions of a wide array of topics, from reviewing internal controls to practicing better worker safety. We also found numerous IT-related risk management articles, but most of them centered around either cyber security or disaster recovery.

Both of these discoveries were unsettling to us. The reality for SMBs is that technology risk is part of their general business risk, and it is a function of daily operation. It does not take a cyber attack or a major storm for a firm to be hobbled by inadequate IT risk management.

Consider the consequences if an employee accidentally spills coffee all over the back of his PC (or even worse, one of your servers) and it shorts out the internal logic boards. Alternatively, if one of your departments suddenly suffers several PC failures because you have not been able to plan for appropriate replacement cycles. Even something as minor as a mild summer storm can cause an IT mess if lightning hits your building, and you are not properly prepared.

Many companies lose business―and potentially customers―if they suffer an IT outage of even a few hours in a single department. Some that rely on the Internet can lose thousands of dollars in minutes if their site―or its connection to their inventory database―goes down.

Technology has enabled SMBs to do more with less―to look and operate like the “big guys” without having a global network of locations, warehouses all over the country, and other criteria that used to separate large enterprises from small ones. However, when technology replaces traditional operating methods, it also requires more attention.

Solid IT planning and administration can mitigate many of the “non-specific” risks associated with technology―the ones few people consider until they hit home. Working with IT experts to plan for replacement of aging equipment before it fails, for example, or planning for and implementing a remote access solution for your personnel to access corporate data and assets, are just two examples of how businesses can plan for and mitigate IT risk easily and at a reasonable cost.

At the end of the day, IT risk mitigation is a cost of doing business. Companies that embrace this reality and proactively work to achieve it save money, time and headaches, in the long run. As part of our IT support services, DynaSis has been helping its customers mitigate all nature of IT risks in their business. We’d be happy to help you create a workable plan to bring all your IT risks under control. We’ll begin with a simple technology assessment, which will pinpoint risks you did not even know you had. To learn more or get started, please give us a call.