Is yours good enough?

According to Jon William Toigo, the author of Disaster Recovery Planning, 15 or 20 years ago a disaster recovery plan might consist of powering down a mainframe and other computers, disassembling components, and drying circuit boards in the parking lot with a hair dryer. That’s because a disaster, in those days, was usually a fire that set off a company’s sprinklers.

Today, there are many more threats, including sabotage. Moreover, most companies’ IT systems are too large to be recovered using such a simple hands-on approach. Even if you could recover from a disaster in the manner Toigo recalls, you probably wouldn’t want to due to the downtime it would require—downtime that could have a significant financial impact.

Consider the case of Hurricane Katrina. When it slammed the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, it wiped out the communications infrastructure of a whole region, uprooting 1,000 wireless towers and knocking down 11,000 utility poles. Many businesses were forced to shut down entirely—even critical ones, including 25 hospitals and 100 broadcast stations. But clients of such company did stay in business—by relocating to off-site facilities equipped with the computing power and backed-up data to keep systems and services online. Some even utilized 18-wheelers with servers and other office equipment inside.

Disaster recovery in the modern age is a detailed, step-by-step course of action for quickly getting back on your feet after a natural or manmade disaster. The details may vary depending on your business needs, and can be developed in-house or purchased as a service.

How prepared are you for disaster? Call us today for a review of your plan.

Focus on your business, we’ll handle the technology.

Sky Technology serves as an affordable, comprehensive and highly skilled IT Department for small to medium businesses. We specialize in creating information system stability for businesses without a full-time technical staff as well as overburdened technical groups that require additional expertise.

But there’s a one that’s been going on lot longer than all of these.

Data versus Information.  We often confuse one for the other (werewolves and vampires both have fangs, do wacky stuff in the night, and have *tons* of angst!).  But we run into trouble when we confuse them (I dare you to drive a stake into the heart of a werewolf…boy, will you be embarrassed!)

Data is just values that describe stuff.  It doesn’t become information until it’s actually useful.

Example…phone books (yeah, remember those?).  They include tons and tons of data…names, numbers, addresses.  But when you use one, you retrieve the information that you’re looking for.

Information is what comes out of using the data.

Data:  Phone book.

Information:  Name and phone # of nearby plumber that can fix the toilet.

Notice that there’s a process that’s undertaken that retrieves information from the data?

The challenge is when we look at the data and say “Wow, we’ve got all this data.  We’re really smart, and know what’s going on.”  If we never do anything with the data, it’s static.  Dormant.  Useless.

So, let’s say you’ve got a list of your Customers.  Cool.  That’s data.  And it includes when their last purchase was, what they bought, etc.  Yup, data again.

Now, let’s say “give me a list of customers who have not purchased from us, or whose total sales volume have gone down more than 50% in the past 6 months.  Now you’ve got a list that is useful…it tells you something!  That’s data, baby!

So here’s the problem.  It’s a lot easier to accumulate data.  And obviously, it’s a critical function, because you can’t have information without data.  And there are a lot of folks out there who think that a ton of data is useful.

And it can be.  But there has to be a process applied to it to get the information out of the data, that’s specific to a need (or a question).

So look at your organizations’ data.  And ask a critical question of your data.  How tough is it to get information out?  The tougher it is, the less valuable your data is.

This is something Sky Technology can help your company resolve.  Interesting proposition – coming from a ‘computer repair company’!  J I laugh because we have been called worse!

• If it lacks the features someone could be using, its too old.

• If a faster PC could increase productivity and thus profit for a business client, then the old one the employee is using is too old even if its a dual core 3.0 from two years ago.

A slow network or slow desktop can cost an employer several minutes per day per employee. $40 a day in lost productivity adds up quick. Then multiply that number by employee count, and then multiply that by 20 work days a month.

That is an eye opening experience.

A good definition of cloud computing:  Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand via secure web-based servers.

Here are the business benefits of this newly emerging technology:

1.  Innovation – new services and benefits can be quickly launched and implemented for your business or employees (such as email systems, VoIP phone service, etc…)

2. Standardization – this easily facilitates technology standardization. What that means is quicker support, easy for employees to use, and a similar computing experience for everyone.

3. Automation – increase the quality of service likes banks (think ATM versus tellers), and allow easy client self service.  No more waiting for tech support!

4. Green advantage – save $$ with decreased capital expenditures and decrease utility bills.  No need to recycle old servers if they are virtually hosted in the cloud!

Ultimately, cloud computing decreases the Total Cost of Ownership.  Not a bad concept for a successful company.

SPECIAL OFFER TO SKY TECHNOLOGY CLIENTS

15% Savings

On your current office product purchases

• When is the last time you compared prices with your current Office Product vendor?

We are offering all Sky Technology Clients:

• SAVINGS on the procurement of the most frequently used office products, paper, toner, janitorial and break room items.
• Partnership pricing with no contract or minimum purchase requirements.
• Earth-friendly comparable Green products made of recycled material (if available) at or below the price you’re paying for non-recycled products.
• FREE next day delivery with our own trucks and drivers.
• Easy to use website with all of your favorites pre-loaded for you.

This is a great opportunity to save your company money without much effort or time out of your day.

We are so confident that we will SAVE your company money on the purchase of Office Products and related Items that we will bring YOU A FREE CANON CALCULATOR VALUED AT $45.00 just for sending your current pricing.

To save time, cut & paste your favorites list and send it to my email address at nick@chicago-op.com This will give me the information I need to show you up to a 15% savings. You can also fax the last 2-3 months of invoices to me at 708-430-2440, if it is easier.

I’ll follow-up by scheduling a brief meeting to present a comparison spreadsheet showing an overall savings percentage by changing vendors to Chicago Office Products. I’ll gather information about your company to set up things like billing methods, delivery time/location preferences, and other custom needs related to your company making the transition easy and effective from the very beginning. I’ll distribute easy-to-use product catalogs, a sample product package, and a ream of our 98 bright paper to get you started.

Visit  us at:  www.chicago-op.com

The breach could have affected all iPad users on the AT&T 3G network, but it looks like just a portion of the users were compromised.

There were some pretty public people who’s accounts were broken into, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual, famous TV anchor Diane Sawyer, NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Hollywood movie producer Harvey Wienstein.

The problem is completely related to the security of the AT&T site, and really was not because of the Apple hardware.  It stemmed from a user authentication process, and this is process if present in many basic websites.

So what this tells me – even the largest of companies overlook security risk, which can have serious consequences.

Is your website or network safe and secure from these types of attacks?

Not sure?

Sky Technology can help – we constantly perform security audits for our clients and help them mitigate or eliminate the risk involved with there technology.

“This impressive new operating system is the best Windows ever – and by a mile.”

It’s simply the safest, most secure Windows operating system ever.  And that’s no small matter… viruses, spyware, worms, and Trojan infections are at an all time high.  Windows 7 sends the hackers running…

Windows 7 also boots up faster and gets you on the Internet quicker than any of its predecessors.  Time is money, and Windows 7 has already saved me tons of it.

Let me warn you, “Windows 7 makes everything else seem decades old.”

Windows 7 is incredibly intuitive and user friendly without being a performance hog.  You will appreciate the speed and efficiency of Windows 7 on your computer and it immediately becomes the new standard for computing.  Windows 7 revolutionizes the PC industry just like high definition revolutionized the television.

Whether your business has 5 employees or 100, we offer a broad portfolio of services to satisfy your needs and surpass your expectations.

Sounds a little ’salesy’ to me, but this is the true value of our company.

We help your business grow – period.

In the course of working with our clients, we often hear two questions:

1. How can I manage our company’s IT more effectively?
2. How can I ensure that our systems are adding value and saving us money?

Companies not only need sufficient resources to operate their environments today; they need to be able to develop sound strategies, recommendations, and roadmaps for scaling their technology to facilitate business growth.

To support our clients’ growing need for skilled IT resources, Sky Technology has expanded our Managed Services practice to provide:

• Unlimited, flat-rate, proactive technical support and 24×7 systems monitoring.
• Seasoned IT leadership and strategy personnel on an interim or part-time basis for organizations that lack senior IT resources.
• VOIP Phone Systems and Service: Unlimited phone service for $39.99 per line per month without the need to purchase a traditional PBX phone server.
• Virtual File Server for secure access over any Internet connection – at the office, home, or client site
• Security Software: comprehensive protection for all you computers, servers, and technology
• Automated Offsite Backup: Military-grade encryption, triple redundancy, no more data loss.  Ever.

Since our inception in 2002, Sky Technology has provided technical support for businesses in a variety of industries, including professional services, manufacturers, law firms, insurance, medical and doctors offices, and many in between – providing both IT management and proactive support for a variety of infrastructure needs.

These services include help desk and user support, infrastructure support (networks, servers, printers, desktops, etc.), vendor support, and hosted cloud solutions.

By expanding and enhancing these capabilities, we are able to support a growing number of organizations that must respond to a fast-evolving environment but are limited in their ability to invest in IT staff.

For more information, contact our sales director, Steve Babin at Steve@SkyTechnologyGroup.com or 630-960-9200.