Business owners need to give serious consideration to their hardware maintenance and software assurance policies. If you refuse the extended warranty on a new vacuum cleaner, and the vacuum cleaner fails, you can just go buy a new vacuum cleaner. With technology, things are not so simple. The affect that poorly maintained hardware or software can have on your business goes far beyond the mere cost of replacing it.

Let’s consider some of the benefits of maintenance:

Maintenance is insurance - Most hardware maintenance agreements include a replacement option in case the hardware fails. A next-business-day option guarantees that hardware failure issues will be resolved within 24 hours.  This is vital for all servers and high use workstations.

Access to support – If you decide to stick with an older software program, it may not be eligible for technical support from the manufacturer. Hanging on to ancient software programs isn’t good for business if it means paying extra for technical support or, worse, having to resolve the issues yourself.

Better than a warranty – Maintenance or software assurance agreements usually provide not only the right to remediation or replacement if your hardware or software fails, but also the latest upgrades or newest codes. This improved functionality can have a significant effect on your employees’ productivity and your company’s bottom line.

Reduced support costs – Having a current maintenance agreement means spending less time requesting technical support. Your IT consulting company should have the necessary training to integrate hardware and software into your company’s infrastructure. With a current maintenance agreement, your IT consultants can interact directly with the hardware or software manufacturer, which helps them to solve problems faster.

When you’re debating whether or not to update your hardware or software agreement, there are a few things you should take into consideration.

What’s the cost of a failure? If your hardware or software fails, how much will it affect your business? Which would cost you more in the long run, replacing the hardware or software or lost productivity and business operations? For example, how much money would a store lose if its old cash registers stopped working, and they had no maintenance contract to cover repairs? Processing sales by hand is time consuming, and it’s certain that some customers would not want to wait. Make sure you have current maintenance contracts for anything that’s vital to your company’s operations, such as core switch, primary business application and production servers.

What’s the cost of maintenance? Each hardware manufacturer has its own maintenance and support options. For example, if a company has 50 versions of the same firewall deployed, it may be more cost effective to forgo the NBD support option and purchase an extra firewall as a spare. You could also see if it’s possible to get a software assurance or phone support option at a lower cost.

How much down time can your business tolerate? Many manufacturers have four-hour responses and 24/7 options for those businesses that have to be up and running as quickly as possible.

You can do without the extended warranty that comes with a new microwave. But your business can’t and shouldn’t have to function without current maintenance agreements for your mission-critical hardware and software products.

Cloud computing brings cost-effective storage and server solutions to businesses. IT departments that need to add or remove hardware and software based on user loads do so as needed at a cost for only what they use. Its’ easy system implementations are another cost-saving strategy and not at all time-consuming.

The most appealing aspect to cloud computing is how it frees up the in-house IT team. This means spending time focused on business-critical tasks. A business no longer has to spend extra in manpower or training. It also offers different types of customer support systems.

Cloud computing helps eliminate miscommunication and time consuming data-entry labor, leading to improved customer relationship management. A fast response to setting up programs and fixing issues means retention of customers and increased business.

Does this sound like hype or reality?

If you are not sure, I can put you in touch with several of our clients that are currently enjoying the ‘hype’ of cloud computing!

Fact: all it takes is one security breach to destroy a company.

But few – especially small businesses – seem to realize it, according to a recent survey released by StaySafeOnline.org. Results show that few small businesses see themselves as a target of online thieves or hackers, resulting in many having only token security policies in place.

StaySafeOnline.org, a website of the National Cyber Security Alliance, has recently released a study that chronicles the cyber security practices and attitudes of small businesses. Conducted in partnership with Visa, the study shows some interesting, if not disturbing, results.

• It turns out that many small businesses (about 65% of the respondents) are highly dependent on their computer / IT / data systems, where they store important information, from sensitive company financial records to personal client information such as credit card info, addresses and phone numbers, and more.

• However, as many as 85% believe that they will not be targeted by hackers and online thieves, and less than half have data security systems in which they are confident. In general, small businesses have, at best, a mediocre security system.

Few realize, though, that it only takes one breach to compromise a company’s finances and relationships with clients. And if you have less than stellar security, stealing from you is easier. You might not have as many online assets as big businesses, but hackers can make a hefty profit by victimizing several easy marks as opposed to bigger and riskier efforts with more secure systems of larger firms.

Don’t take a risk with important data, and don’t compromise the relationships and reputation you’ve built with your clients over the years. Good security is always worth it. If you’re interested in knowing more about beefing up your security through company policies, software, and user education, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d be happy to sit down with you and discuss a security blueprint that’s cost effective and custom built to meet your specific needs.

Reference: National Small Business Study

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org.

Employees using their own mobile devices for work may seem like a good idea at first – it’s less expense for you, the employer, and they can also make employees more productive. However, it also means that you are allowing potentially unsecure devices to access your company’s data. The solution? An effective IT security policy that balances personal freedom to use these devices and your need to secure important business information.

As technology continues to become more affordable and accessible to consumers, it’s an inevitable fact that employers will see more and more of their employees using their own personal devices such as laptops and mobile phones to access the company’s IT system.

This can be a dangerous thing. Since these devices aren’t company owned and regulated, you have limited access and control over how they are used. Employees could download all sorts of malware and viruses on their devices and pass the infection along to your IT system when they access it.

The solution: a comprehensive IT security policy. It’s important that you find a compromise between the freedom of the employee to use the device as desired and your need to keep your IT system safe from viruses and other threats to your data’s security. Steps such as having employees run mobile device management (MDM) software on their devices is one of many actions you can take to lessen the risk of security breaches. You may also want to implement applications and software that check and screen for malware, both for laptops and mobile devices. And don’t forget that while Android seems to have a bigger problem with malicious software, Apple isn’t exactly virus-free, either.

Employees have a right to use their personal devices as they see fit, but not at the expense of important company information stored in your IT system. Running a tight ship in terms of security is an effective way to protect your business interests and your sensitive company data. If you are interested in knowing more about developing a concrete and effective IT security policy for personal device use as well as general system access, please don’t hesitate to give us a call so we can sit down with you and discuss a custom security blueprint that’s just right for you.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org.

Don’t you feel that sometimes, the simplest of tasks are the hardest to do? We do too! And if you have similar feelings when it comes to adjusting the line spacing between texts and paragraphs (for Microsoft Word 2010), here are some tips to help you.

Change the line spacing

If you want to change the line spacing for an entire document, it’s simple. Just apply a Quick Style set that uses the spacing that you want and you’re done. To do that, you’ll have to go through the following steps:

• Go to the Home tab and in the Styles group, click Change Styles.
• § Point to Style Set, and point to the various style sets. Use the line preview with the help of which you can notice how the line spacing changes from one style set to the next.
• § On spotting the spacing you like, click the name of the style set.

However, if you want to change the line spacing for a portion of the document, you should select the paragraphs and change their line spacing settings. Here’s how you can do that:

• § First, select the paragraphs for which you want to change the line spacing and on the Home tab, go to the Paragraph group and click Line Spacing.
• § Either click the number of line spaces that you want or click Line Spacing Options, and then select the options that you want under Spacing.

If you’re confused about which line spacing options to choose, this list might be of help:

• Single  - This option accommodates the largest font in that line, plus a small amount of extra space. The amount of extra space varies depending on the font that is used.
• 1.5 lines -   This option is one-and-one-half times that of single line spacing.
• Double -   This option is twice that of single line spacing.
• At least -  This option sets the minimum line spacing that is needed to fit the largest font or graphic on the line.
• Exactly – This option sets fixed line spacing which is expressed in points. If the text is in a 10-point font, for example, you can specify 12 points as the line spacing.
• Multiple -  This option sets line spacing that can be expressed in numbers greater than 1. Setting line spacing to 1.15, for example, will increase the space by 15 percent, and setting line spacing to 3 increases the space by 300 percent (also called triple spacing).

NOTE   Word increases the spacing for a line that contains a large text character, graphic, or formula. If you want to space all lines evenly within a paragraph, use exact spacing and specify an amount of space that is large enough to fit the largest character or graphic in the line. Items that appear cut off can be dealt with by increasing the amount of spacing.

Change the spacing before or after paragraphs

Changing the spacing between paragraphs for an entire document requires you to apply a Quick Style set that uses the spacing that you want. It has been explained in detail in the following steps:

• Go to the Home tab and in the Styles group, click Change Styles.
• Point to Style Set, and point to the various style sets. Using the live preview, notice how the line spacing changes from one style set to the next.
• When you see spacing that you like, click the name of the style set.

Once you have applied a style set, you can customize the spacing by using the new paragraph spacing options. On clicking one of these options, the line and spacing settings of the style set are overridden. Here’s how you can use the paragraph spacing options to change the spacing:

• On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Change Styles.
• Point to Paragraph Spacing, and then click the option that you want.

If you want to change the spacing before and after selected paragraphs, select the paragraph before or after which you want to change the spacing. On the Page Layout tab, in the Paragraph group, under Spacing, click the arrow next to Before or After and enter the amount of space that you want. Keep in mind that paragraphs are followed by a blank line, and headings have extra space above them by default.

So the next time you’re having trouble adjusting the line spacing between texts and paragraphs, do follow the steps given above. After all, tasks that are troublesome become easy with a little bit of help, don’t you think?