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Posts from the ‘Cloud Services’ Category

Jan 22

Cost Savings
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Cloud Computing Considerations for a New Economy

It may be interesting to consider cloud computing as a great economic factor affecting the success of small, medium, and large businesses alike. There is money to be saved no matter what size business one has, but there are as many pitfalls as with any other major business change. Change in business has to be managed well, and taking some potential pitfalls into account in advance can help ensure success and avoid disaster.

The first issue is understanding your organization, taking into account both business processes and employees. When is the last time the business processes of your organization were mapped out in a formalized manner to make sure that they do not resemble a plate of half-eaten spaghetti? If your answer is never, then it is time for business process analysis and re-engineering. Everything that happens in the supply chain, the reporting process, manufacturing, service, and finance will be put into diagrams, including all transactions between employees and departments. Once this is properly documented in a visual manner, it is remarkably easy to untangle the spaghetti. Redundancy will become glaringly obvious, as well as convoluted and unnecessary approval chains. It is important to understand that most of this is not willful poor performance on behalf of your employees, but rather fear of job loss, attempts at quality control, and procedures that were created spontaneously rather than the result of careful planning. During this process one can expect employees to become defensive. It is extremely important to reassure them that this process is not about downsizing or recrimination, but it is a process of efficiency and empowerment. This empowerment can be stressed. Tell these employees that your team is there to help them get more visibility and control of their processes: people want to be empowered. This is the consensus-building part of organizational change in a technology improvement project.

Another point is to look at cloud computing from an objective standpoint when making a decision. Middle managers and lower executives will often do anything to save a dollar on the front end, as they may be worried about appearing fiscally irresponsible. Sometimes this can result by improper analysis of the total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI). There are cheaper cloud services than Office 365 and related such as the suite offered by Google. However if you try to send someone a Google doc the default way from the Google Cloud Suite to another business or individual, they will be prompted with requirements for their own Google accounts, and they will have trouble with visual compatibility with everyone else who is using Microsoft Office. As far as that is concerned, please believe us when we say anyone who does matter in the business world is using Microsoft Office, and when you stray from that business standard you are alienating other businesses, customers, and your own employees (who will need re-training because they already arrive in the workforce pre-trained in Microsoft Office). Because of this, it is important to go with the business standard, and that is Microsoft. While there are uses for other cloud services, they are limited to specialty server uses on products like Amazon and IBM for middleware and back-office use.

Reliance on the Service Level Agreement or SLA for your business continuity needs including disaster management and recovery plans are a mistake. The answer to permanent uptime is and always has been redundancy from an organizational standpoint. Make sure you have your IT provider or internal staff backing up data and documents, and make sure that there are proper continuity and recovery plans in place in the event of an emergency.

Business processes and office procedures will certainly change with your technology project. It is vital that roles and responsibilities in a project and afterwards are clearly defined. This helps empower people and also create an atmosphere where employees know there will be accountability: they will not be allowed to let the ball drop. Sometimes assigning the ultimate root access for a system to an outside vendor such as the Web and I helps avoid slip-ups and even assist in compliance with the Sarbanes Oxley Act for smaller businesses. A technology project implemented correctly is always a great way to reduce your liability footprint, possibly even resulting in reduced business liability insurance rates.

Risk is always a prime consideration. Look at the risks, security and otherwise that your provider offers. Our company, the Web and I, has not experienced a single outage lasting more than a few hours for any client since we were founded a half-dozen years ago. We are especially proud that none of our clients has ever experienced a security breach.

Making a decision is best started after speaking to someone with experience. Call on us at the Web and I and speak to one of our seasoned senior engineers. Find out what has worked and not worked for us and our clients. If there is interest, you will be put in touch with some of our clients to discuss their experiences over the years. We find they are our best sales people! Call us now at 646-853-0573 and learn more now!

Sep 23

Cloud Computing
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Cloud Computing Considerations

Planning a cloud installation properly is essential to the success of the implementation, but there are at least half a dozen other considerations that should not be neglected.

Delaying the move to cloud computing is a danger to businesses. All of your competitors are making the move and reaping the benefits. Change is difficult and it is only natural to put off taking advantage of newer technology making the excuse that they will wait and see what develops in the industry which will preferably involve less overall change. The problem with not taking advantage of the cost savings and capabilities of the Cloud is that your competitors are already signing up to use the Cloud. Leaner and more agile companies who are using a cloud model for their business are spending less on software licensing. Their employees are able to use multiple devices for work including their tablets and phones and even Apple computers. Security is great, you have a disaster recovery plan that is done for you by the service provider, and the controls and auditing measures in place for a business with employees. If you are a smaller company then you are missing out on the capabilities you need to compete with larger companies. The ubiquitous use of cloud computing puts smaller businesses on an equal footing in many areas when competing with medium and large companies in the same industries. For large companies, it helps them severely cut IT costs, and a hybrid private / public cloud approach can meet their needs best.

Consultants you use need to be able to understand your finances and current IT expenses and build a ROI case for your move to cloud computing. It is always important to understand how what you do with your IT budget affects finance.

Some people worry about the security of the public cloud providers. There is no need to worry, however, these companies have all made sure to create the best security systems possible, and outside breaches of public cloud data are almost unheard of. Local computers and network policy can also affect compliance, so password, network, and storage policies should be set accordingly. Companies should have on hand staff that understand the requirements for compliance with Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, and other standards their industries require. Some companies might do business with other areas of the world such as the European Union,  where there are additional compliance regulations as well.

Having a vendor with an understanding of your data, how to integrate it, and how to analyze it is key to a successful cloud implementation. You need to have people who can take your existing data and find its’ proper place in your new cloud system. This provides you with the foundation for the data and metadata you will build with your new system, so it has to be done correctly. Interfaces to other systems have to be made as well, based on a deep knowledge of your historical data and existing systems. Finally, your consultants need to make charts, graphs, and dashboards that help you interact with data that is continually analyzed in real-time.

For help understanding what your options are with Cloud Computing, call us at 646-853-0573: we’re the veterans of Cloud Implementations, and we provide cloud services for your business from Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Amazon.

Sep 22

Cloud Computing
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Factors that Contribute to a Successful Software Implementation

Today offices everywhere are engaging in implementations of software such as E-Mail such as Microsoft Exchange / Outlook, Office Productivity software such as Microsoft Office, Accounting, Enterprise IM, and Customer Relationship Management. Each software product companies choose starts out with so much promise and optimism. Companies are not choosing vendors and implementation staff lightly, and they enter a project with high expectations for both. When you understand a software implementation from a proper viewpoint, it makes more sense and works better. First of all, the solution to problems are not just about technology, the technology is only a tool. The implementation is  about the successful training of staff and adoption of the full feature set planned. Understanding that the implementation is about the people more than it is about the technology also changes the role of project leadership to the company management and not to Information Technology departments or consultants. Your staff has to feel comfortable about the software in advance of the installation, understand how they will do work with the new system, and be optimistic that the system will reduce unnecessary repetitive effort they put in now and empower them with a better handle on their own data. Pitfalls  at this point abound, but with good planning, they can be avoided and your company can have a successful implementation.

The promise of good enterprise systems is powerful: keeping all of the data and documents in one secure place and managing all aspects of customer care.  Reduced IT costs and new capabilities are also part of the promise of a cloud implementation.

What should managing officers in a company do to succeed? First, they have to make sure to win over their employees, the final users, and keep them enthusiastic, engaged, and involved every step of the way. When the employees feel empowered and included, they are a powerful force for technology adoption. They have to be convinced that not only policy, but actual advantages in the way they do work, will keep them adopting and using the new systems for all work going forward. Legacy systems should be given a turn-off date, so that users expect to clearly be aware that they will not be able to use the old system beyond a specific date and time.

Another thing that managing officers and owners should consider is controlling the expectations, both theirs and their employees’. Everyone needs to see that the successful implementation is about people and not just technology. Also employees and officers need to understand that data migration, programming customizations, and writing custom help files is a considerable effort, and time will vary based on criteria that is sometimes more predictable than others. Sometimes a good implementation will require some dates to be changed from earlier to later, but it is better to change the plans a company has made than to rush an implementation to be complete before its’ time.

At the Web and I we have a lot of experience with implementations large and small. We have seen and surpassed all of the common pitfalls, and we know what your organization needs for its’ implementation to succeed. For help with implementation, and with choosing software to implement, please call us at 646-853-0573.

Mar 15

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Why Computing Innovation is Slower at Work than at Home

On their home PC’s people are experimenting with a variety of technologies and techniques long before they are supported in the workplace. Many people at home have replaced their laptops with I-Pads, to the extent where they even can run Windows on their I-Pads. Workers who type more tend to prefer the laptops, but the visually oriented, particularly executives, have moved on from notebooks to the tablet paradigm. Use of alternative devices by employees and having them supported by IT in the workplace is a fairly new idea, and the pace of acceptance of change moves slowly. Adoption of new operating systems with desirable features for workers will certainly be delayed for years with the new Windows 8 operating system, for instance. They employees that will really want to move to Windows 8 use multiple devices for computing, and they will want to take advantage of the synchronization features that help them keep the same files in the same locations on all of their machines.

Some at home have already discovered a variety of cloud services, from I-Tunes, to Amazon to Carbonite. Home users find them convenient and inexpensive, particularly for maintaining backups and storing media files like movies and music. Cloud tools for the business like Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs are ready for the business world, but most IT departments at work have not considered the savings, efficiency, or speed available in the Cloud. They cling to their servers and the aging applications that run on them. Do not blame the IT departments or think that they are not excited about the latest technology. The reason that IT departments are slow to adopt is that a well-run IT department has the most well-defined set of rules of any department in an organization. These rules all fall under one or often all of the following five cornerstones of corporate IT departments:

  1. Maintain Projects On-Time and Under or on-Budget.
  2. Ensure Maximum Up-time.
  3. Maintain a Positive Relationship with Almost All Employees.
  4. Ensure Strict Conformity to Organization Policy
  5. Follow Executive Directives to the Spirit of the Message not Just the Letter.

A Client Experience with the Cloud

One of our clients, attorney Jennifer Drossman, has found unanticipated help by moving to the Cloud. She was at a meeting far from her office, and she needed additional documents from her server. Because she had Microsoft Office 365 with Cloud Faxing, she located the documents she needed right on her I-Phone, changed them to suit the date and situation by editing on her phone, and finally she printed the documents at the meeting by faxing them from her I-Phone to the fax at her location.

What Drives IT Department Decisions

Because IT departments have best practices that are standardized for almost every eventuality, supporting a new Windows operating system requires much research and testing. An outsider to the world of IT may think that there are impartial, scientific, and fact based test results published for new operating systems. The truth is that everything written about new software is more in the form of an overview, and never detailed enough to replace the testing your IT department must do with a new version of Windows. The department must also be very aware of how sensitive most users are to change. A few employees will want a new operating system version, but most will feel that learning new ways of doing things will cost them existing functionality and that the learning process will distract them from and delay their work. If an IT department were to suggest moving to the cloud, it is likely that the manager suggesting the move would have her or his job on the line, now dependant on the perceived outcome of the move to the Cloud. Because change will inevitably serve to disrupt organizations in the short-term, an IT department usually waits for the directives for change to come from the collected executives they answer to. In very small businesses and professional offices, there is no IT department, and Office 365 is an amazing opportunity for achieving better and more efficient work and collaboration for offices with two or more people. Interestingly enough, the Cloud also offers a product for IT staff to maintain, monitor, and repair all non-hardware related issues remotely and with excellent automation and monitoring tools called  Windows Intune. It helps maintain licensing compliance, includes the latest edition of Windows with licenses. Windows Updates can be decided upon and rolled out or not installed across the company from a dashboard. Remote assistance allows IT staff and consultants to take over your computer and fix issues more quickly than if they had to visit.

The rewards are compelling, and we are seeing so many organizations of all sizes benefit from moving to the Cloud. We hope that home use of Cloud technology by executives and professionals with an office will demand access from their IT consultants or employees today. Enjoy the benefits of the Information Age by having everything at your fingertips and you will always make the best decisions.

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