Seamless Mobile Working

IT Solutions for
Mobile Working

Many companies have an IT network based in the office but also have employees who often need to work away from the office. Whilst they might have mobile phones and tablets that enable them to work wherever required, there are a number of aspects that need to be considered, including:

• Back-ups. Anything done on a laptop, netbook, tablet or mobile will not be backed-up unless you specifically do it – it’s not automatic in the way it might be in the office. So anything done on a device will be gone forever if you lose or damage it, unless you have consciously and specifically performed a back-up.
• Sharing. Items stored on a server or computer at the office cannot be accessed via a remote device – unless you specifically make an arrangement to be able to access it. It can get very messy and annoying trying to access the documents you want.
• Accessing company-wide systems. You might have a system or software used across the organisation, such as email, calendars or a specific application. Unless you integrate your mobile and IT systems the two will remain separate, meaning you can’t access the company calendar or the essential software you need when out of the office .
• Business continuity and disaster planning. If something happens and staff can’t get into the office, perhaps because of weather disruption due to snow and ice for example, they might be able to work from home or another location - but only if you have set up the arrangements in advance for them to do so. It’s often too late to create this ability after the event has happened. We have created some useful articles to help you understand more about the alternative ways of doing this which you can access at What is Disaster Planning & Business Continuity? and An Introduction to Remote Working.

None of these issues are insurmountable though, and a good IT support company will be able to advise on the best solutions for your organisation and its circumstances. With the growth in mobile devices and remote working, we would suggest ensuring your IT company has suitable experience in integrating mobile and IT systems, otherwise you might find yourself dealing with multiple organisations and incompatible systems.

Business Continuity and Disaster Planning

Continuity & Disaster Planning

The news is regularly full of reasons why businesses need to look at continuity planning.

Whether it’s the recent riots, the fires at Peckforton Castle and Chester Enterprise Centre, or floods following rains, there are plenty of threats to your business.

It could even be something as simple as road works cutting the phone cable to your office, bringing down not just your telephone lines but also your internet connection and access to emails.

Have you thought how you would cope if something like this happened to you? And if you have thought about it, have you set up robust systems to protect yourself and tested them?

As with many of these things, the first thing to look at is your requirements. If you run a 24/7 real-time operation with hundreds of people depending on you, then your business continuity is vitally important. But if you have an office because it’s convenient but in reality everyone could work from home remotely using their mobiles and laptops, then it’s not such an issue, providing it didn’t last for a long time and you had a suitable back-up routine.
Here are some of the continuity arrangements that you might like to think about.

Back-ups. These ensure things are recoverable if anything happens, but they don’t stop the event from happening or reduce the impact. Remember though that your back-up storage should be off-site. If your premises has a fire or flood and your back-up is stored on-site, then you can’t get at it so it will have been completely pointless from a continuity perspective. You want to be able to load up and get going again as quickly as possible.

Physical security. As prevention is better than cure, you want to stop as many dangerous elements as possible from getting at your IT. This includes making sure everything is locked and physically protected, but also the online aspects. Hackers can access your system whenever you sign onto an internet connection so make sure all your firewalls, antivirus and spam protection are up-to-date – automated updates are usually provided every day. Don't forget about password protection and screen locks.

Mirrored Services. If the priority is to carry on working seamlessly (known as ‘business continuity’), rather than recovering quickly (known as ‘disaster planning’), you will need some form of mirrored application. In effect, this is a duplicate of your systems that would be activated if your normal operations went down. This could be as simple as an email continuity system, an overflow telephone system to a telephone answering service, wireless internet or a full mirrored server providing seamless service to staff and customers.

We’ve produced a couple of articles on different forms of business continuity and disaster planning which you might find useful (What is Disaster Planning & Business Continuity and How to help your Business Survive Disasters), and we also have a blog post on a specific form of mirrored servers – virtualisation.