Special Guest Blogger: Becca, your friendly Mother marketing lady.

I love Project Runway. If you haven't watched it, it is a reality show on Lifetime that pits up and coming clothing designers against eachother. They get crazy challenges (design a piece out of things in a garden shop) and design some truly amazing outfits. One of my favorite parts of the show is Tim Gunn, their design "mentor." Whenever Tim is looking at a design piece in progress, and it a little ugly/incomplete/a total disaster, he will say "make it work!" as only Tim can say. While I adore Tim, I'm shocked a contestant has never smacked him for giving such totally unhelpful advice!

But really, isn't that what we all want for certain parts of our business? Just make it work! I don't want to think about it, care about it, or deal with it! Just MAKE IT WORK! Here at Mother, we get that for most small and mid sized business owners, controllers, executives - they just want their IT to work. They do not care about the intricacies of network management or managed IT services. It is completely irrelevant how spam is blocked or how the network is protected. They just want their IT person to make IT work.

That's what Mother does. We provide outsourced IT that manages, monitors, and maintains your network in such a way that you don't even have to think about it. Just know that it works and no matter what you need or how your business changes, Mother will "make it work."

As a managed IT services provider, our goal is to be your single source for all your IT needs. We will partner and coordinate with your line of business software providers, your telecomm companies, etc., but our philosophy is your outsourced IT company should know everything about your IT.

Telecomm is a huge part of how most small and midsized businesses do their business. In recent weeks, we have been reviewing some of our client’s telecomm costs and are finding there is great opportunity to save some precious cash.

Should you consider reviewing your telecomm needs? Look over this list and if there are any triggers, give your outsourced IT or network management guys a call (or better yet, contact Mother!)

1.    Telecomm costs fall year to year, not rise.  Unlike many other types of expenses, telecomm costs fall each year.  Vendors that are “willing to lock this price for 3 years” are really not giving you a deal at all.  There are great incentives to shorter term contracts.

2.    Contracts coming due.  Many clients’ contracts are close to expiring or already have expired.  They are on a month-to-month contract, paying rates that were competitive 2 or 3 years ago.  See point #1.  Renegotiating would allow a lower contract price.

3.    POTS Lines are Expensive.  POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines are expensive, highly regulated products.  There are cheaper alternatives on the market, depending on your needs.  PRI circuits, VOIP, cable service all are cheaper alternatives to the expensive old technology.

4.    Cable and DSL Service.  The traditional high capacity internet service was the T1.  Although they are reliable, the alternatives are now rivaling the same stability at greater levels of performance.  The typical T1 line costs $300 to $500 per month for 1.5 MB download and upload speed.  Cable offers 16MB down and 2 MB up for prices around $200 per month, and the uptime is almost the same as T1. 

Here’s the bottom line – don’t live with the telecomm and internet connection service you have today.  Ask for some help. Mother can give you an assessment of both your needs and what options exist. We are at the frontline and have access to information (and time to understand it) that is not even available to the end user. Most of our outsourced IT clients today are getting much better service speeds at lower prices. Best of both worlds – no sacrifice.  Few things like this exist in our world…

Some of Mother’s Managed IT services clients have recently converted to thin-client technology, and we're getting more questions about what these things actually are!  No, this is not some diet, or worse, a weird new difficult technology. 

 Thin Clients are like stripped down computers; they have a processor, memory, a screen, keyboard and mouse.  They are generally very inexpensive - $200 to $500.  The user’s computer applications, storage and desktop interface – generally speaking the entire computer session – is run elsewhere on a server.  Why?  Why not run the computer the regular way – with all applications stored and running locally? 

The main reasons for switching to thin clients are management and performance. To demonstrate these reasons, two examples:

1. Remote Users.  Acme Bunn Warmers has manufacturing plant in downstate Illinois. The managers must access the ERP systems in HQ.  They currently use a VPN tunnel, but it is slow.  Each time they try to generate a production report, they take a coffee break and return 10 minutes later. The same report takes seconds in HQ. The cause? Communications speed. The possible solutions? An expensive data pipe upgrade, or a thin-client for each user. The thin-client only moves the display picture across the wire – small amount of data – rather than all the information the remote user is accessing.  Result?  Performance the same as if they were working in HQ.
2. Standard Users.  Acme also has a large group of telemarketers and customer service employees.  These users run basic applications to perform their work.  Currently, the employees experience slow machines and there have been viruses infecting some of their machines.  The Cause?  Employees are randomly installing software like iTunes, and surfing the internet, attracting viruses and gobbling up bandwidth.  The Solution?  A thin-client that allows for no user installation of applications, standardizes how their system operates, and limits where they can navigate.  Result?  Fast inexpensive workstations for the employees with simplified management and administration.

There are key events to think about migrating to Thin-client.  Technology refresh – replacement of those old machines, etc.  If you are thinking about replacing a significant percentage of your workstations, give Thin-clients consideration. From a network management perspective, thin clients are simple to manage and reduce your risks. It's not the right solution for every company, but Mother is happy to explore it with you. Just contact us.

So what do you need to do to have sound backups? There are a few key steps to follow to ensure you are truly protected.  Here are the basics:

1. Validate Backup Jobs.  There are tools that can be used to monitor and report on the status of your backups.  Mother's network management customers have those tools installed to immediately notify our help desk of any backup problems. In absence of this, review the log files regularly to ensure the jobs are running.  Hire a professional to check the job to determine what is backed up and how often.  Also, use that professional to test the restore capability to ensure the backups are working.
   
2. Make sure you have all the data protected you want protected.
   
3. Make sure you have a “System State Recovery” backup made as well.
   
4. Rotate!  You should always have a copy of your data offsite.  Depending on your  needs you might need to do this daily or weekly. Talk with your outsourced IT or internal provider about how many offsite copies you might  need too.
   
5. Know your options for offsite. If you determine you need a more secure means of offsite backups (beyond just rotating discs) you can have a service handle it automatically or your IT provider can set this up for you if you have multiple locations.
   
6. Have a recovery plan. Make sure you think through the recovery process. In the event of a disaster, how long can you survive without computers? Will you need a site for temporary operations? Can employees operate from home? What data will you need recover? Who will manage the plan?  Think about equipment, network, software.   

Any good IT professional can help you walk through the risks and offsetting costs for the key areas of a disaster plan. No matter how you handle your IT, it's imperative you consider all the "what ifs" and determine a plan of action.

Mother not only provides first class outsourced IT services, but now and then we find time to squeeze ourselves into the newspaper! Read the October 8 Daily Herald column about advice for businesses preparing for the flu season. Some of Mother's thoughts, and those of other area businesses, are found here in Jim Kendall's regular business column.

For more on Mother's take on preparing for the flu season, read here.