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

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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 »

Many people have slagged Windows Vista for a variety of reasons. New PC’s that normally would have Vista installed can be bought with a Windows XP “downgrade”. And now that Vista Service Pack 1 is out the playing field will once again be covered in a foggy glow, and we can expect a rash of fresh calls to continue buying XP in favour of Vista (more about the Vista service pack next week).

However Vista has been available for over a year, and XP sales are due to stop soon. So what happens when you simply can’t buy XP any more? What are you supposed to to do then? Here’s the breakdown, and why business managers should care. Continue Reading »

Let’s spend a few minutes looking at something which is tangent to working from home… managing software licenses. Now I’m sure many business managers read that phrase and say “What’s to manage? You buy software and install it!”. End of problem, right?

Not so much. Especially for organizations over 50 machines, license management can become a bit of a bugaboo. And when you hit the magic 50-mark, you also start showing up on the radar of auditing companies.

Here’s why caring can save you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Continue Reading »