Technology In Check

I’m going to continue along the thread of Software as a Service that I started last week, and tell you about a problem that’s developed with one of the more common service offerings. The problem relates to online backup services, sometimes referred to as remote backup.

The basic premise is simple… as a business owner, you want to ensure that your data is backed up safely, and that it’s stored off-site. So you subscribe to a service to do this for you. The service you subscribe to enables you to select data that is sent encrypted over the Internet, so that it’s kept elsewhere in case something bad happens to your office premises. Everything is peachy-keen, right?

Maybe it is. Then again, maybe not.

Update: CPG Systems has started  doing remote/ online backups. Visit their website for more information

Continue Reading »

As promised in last week’s item, we’re going to take a look today at Software as a Service, commonly referred to as SaaS (pronounced sass or sahz, depending on who you ask). Basically put, SaaS is when you pay someone for a service, where that service mimics a piece of software you can buy.

A good example is something like Salesforce, where you pay for a service, instead of buying the customer relationship management (CRM) software. This is something that can be of real value to a business that’s trying to save money. But it can also be a real problem in certain situations.

Let’s take a bit of a closer look at how SaaS relates to recession IT spending, as well as some of the pros and cons. Continue Reading »

Many people are throwing around the ‘R’ word lately, at least in relation to the US (Canada in general, and BC specifically seem to be doing pretty well lately). Yes, I mean recession. Whether or not there is a recession is something for accountants and other financial types to decide, not me. I’m just a geek.

However I would like to talk about how you, as a business manager, can get the most bang for your IT buck during tougher financial times. Whether you’re directly affected by economic developments, or if you’re simply caught in the crossfire, here’s a few ideas on handling the tech side of things. Continue Reading »

Not all the items I write are posted here, you know.

My Company also produces a bi-monthly newsletter called Technology Check. And every issue has at least one item in it that doesn’t make it to this blog until quite some time later, if at all. There’s also a section on quick shortcuts, some giveaway info, and other tidbits.

An excellent example of this is an article I wrote for the latest issue, discussing how much IT should cost. That is, what should you spend on your IT as a percentage of expenses (or is it revenues?)…

To subscribe to the newsletter, click on ‘Subscribe’ on the left hand navigation bar (under ‘Pages Here’). It’s not a “Please send me some spam” list either. It’s used for the newsletter, and the occasional special promotion. As in, maybe once a month, total.

You should sign up. Why don’t you go do that now?