New Business Continuity Solution - Storagecraft

Ensure you have a plan
in the event of an emergency

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the importance we place on business continuity and disaster recovery for our clients. We’ve already produced a number of articles on the topic, to find out more visit What is Disaster Planning & Business Continuity? and How to Help your Business Survive Disasters.

We’ve recently partnered with an additional provider of solutions called Storagecraft. The beauty of the Storagecraft product suite is that it can restore servers and workstations in minutes, rather than hours or days. If providing a seamless service is important for your business whilst you recover after a disaster, Storagecraft is worth looking at.

With all disaster recovery and business continuity systems, the secret lies in prior planning. You can’t implement these approaches after the disaster has struck, you need to have planned and arranged it in advance. Then, when you need it, the recovery can be activated. Systems such as those provided by Storagecraft mirror your existing equipment so that they can be switched on quickly and reduce your downtime.

They can’t replicate the data saved on your systems, but they can ensure that your business doesn’t cease whilst you wait on replacement equipment. You don’t have to wait until after purchase, delivery and installation before you get up and running again, you simply switch over to the mirrored system and carry on whilst you get replacement equipment.

You’ll still need to replace any data you’ve lost (which will have required a robust off-site back-up routine), but at least you can get moving quickly again. It has been suggested that 70-80% of businesses cease trading within 18-24 months of a major disaster incident, so it’s worth spending some time considering how you might deal with the situation.

For examples of how Storagecraft have helped businesses like you, read their Case Studies.

Reducing the Pain of Switching Broadband or Hosting Provider

Before Making A Switch Ensure
You Know What You're Getting

Moving to an alternative website hosting company or broadband provider is a serious proposition. We explored some of the pitfalls in doing so in our last posting Thinking of Switching Hosting or Broadband Provider? and in the article Changing Premises and Suppliers. Here, we want to explore some of the techniques you can use to potentially mitigate the effects.

Start early. We can’t emphasise this enough. Setting up alternative arrangements and ensuring a smooth transition will take longer than you expect and could cost, so start considering the implications before you make the decision to change, rather than afterwards.

Do a complete back-up before the process starts. Then, if anything goes wrong or there are problems restoring the systems, you have a ready-made status quo to return to.

Consider implementing disaster planning and business continuity initiatives in advance. Techniques such as Virtualisation and Mirrored Servers ensure you can carry on in the event of a disaster and they can also get you up and running quicker afterwards. They can also be very useful in helping with a move such as this. These were explored further in What is Disaster Planning & Business Continuity? and How to help your business survive disasters.

Creating a Checklist Can Help
The Transition Run Smoothly

Create an alternative internet access system. You might need to use a Wi-Fi system or be temporarily located elsewhere whilst the changeover takes place.

Use cloud computing facilities. If visualisation and mirroring techniques are outside your budget, the cloud may provide a viable alternative through tools such as Google Documents, Google Calendar and Gmail or other web-based systems. You will need to ensure you have an alternative means of accessing the internet to use these systems and you may want to tell those with whom you communicate regularly to use a different email address during the period. You can read more about cloud computing in Introduction to Cloud Computing.

Consider email continuity. This system creates, in effect, an ongoing copy of your emails which can be activated automatically in the event of your email system crashing. If set up in advance, and used alongside an alternative internet access method, it can help to ensure that you retain access to emails whilst the changeover is taking place.

Using some or all of these techniques together can help to reduce the inevitable impact of switching providers. As ever, our advice is to take the advice of a competent and experienced IT support company before making the decision to switch, so you can be both knowledgeable and fully prepared beforehand.

Thinking of Switching Hosting or Broadband Provider?

Plan Ahead When Considering
Changing Hosting Provider

A natural reaction when organisations want to reduce costs is to look at changing their service providers. We wrote about this in more detail in Changing Premises and Suppliers.
We wanted to highlight some specific issues with changing broadband provider and website hosting companies. As these are both competitive markets, we’re seeing more and more organisations wanting to do it. It’s not always cost that drives organisations to switch, sometimes it's additional facilities or services. But regardless of the reason, the pitfalls to be aware of are the same and include the points given below.

Loss of internet access. If you change broadband provider, you’ll not be able to use the internet for several days, so no emails, websites or web-enabled applications unless you set up a separate means of access such as Wi-Fi.

If you use any cloud-based applications, you’ll also lose them. So if you have Google Documents, Googlemail, remote off-site back-ups or specific cloud-based software, you’ll lose access during the handover period.

Loss of website and emails. If you’re changing the organisation who hosts your website or provide your email adresses, you’ll also lose your emails and company website during the handover period. We don’t mean you won’t be able to access websites in general – you can do that if you have an alternative arrangement such as Wi-Fi. We mean that your customers can’t access your website, which could be disastrous for sales and service.

It also means that you won’t get your emails. It doesn’t mean they will be held in a server somewhere and you can access them when the system comes back on, it means they are lost forever with no way to get them back. You’ll never get them.

Changing hosting company or broadband provider is a serious proposition. We’re not saying don’t do it, there might be very good reasons why you want or need to. But you do need to plan it carefully in advance. In our blog posting next month - Reducing the Pain of Switching Broadband or Hosting Provider, we’ll highlight some of the techniques you can consider to mitigate the effects experienced the handover period.

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.

Watch YOUR TV Anywhere

Use Your Home Sky Box

To Connect To External Devices

Have you ever been frustrated when staying in a hotel overnight or on holiday and unable to watch your recorded programmes from Sky+? Watching the hotel’s Freeview channels or paying for the movies just doesn’t cut it, not when the big game is available via your Sky channels – at home.

Slingbox is a solution to this. It’s a device that plugs into your home TV device, such as your Sky+ box, which then makes it available via external devices, such as smartphones, netbooks and the like, as well as desktops.

It has two variations:

• Solo, which is the standard product,
• Pro-HD, if you have a high-definition device at home.

You’ll also need SlingPlayer Mobile to watch your TV on your smartphone or tablet.

Prices and ordering are available from their website http://uk.slingbox.com/go/slingbox.  

Transferring Notes from an iPad or iPhone to Your Computer

The problem with remote working is that you’re not always connected to your server. So important notes can get left on your remote device rather than transferred to your desktop PC, unless you retype it.

One organisational-wide solution is SafeSync which we wrote about in a recent blog posting Sharing & Backing Up Across Multiple Devices. But if you have the Notes App on your iPad or iPhone, there is another solution which isn’t dependent on your organisation having something such as SafeSync.

This video tutorial demonstrates how it’s done, in simple, step-by-step fashion with screen shots and instructions.

Uploaded to YouTube by iTechTutorialVideos.

Sharing & Backing Up Across Multiple Devices

The Ability To Back Up Data
Across Multiple Devices

Mobile phones, tablets, netbooks and other such devices are great for allowing you to work remotely and not be tied to the office.

But the potential problem with them is that they are not backed-up, which means that if something goes wrong with your device, you might lose everything on it. So if you lose your phone or spill coffee on your iPad, you could have lost everything on it. Everything. Documents, contacts, photographs – the lot, never to be replaced.

There’s also the problem of not being able to access data or files on your server when you’re out, unless you specifically connect your device to it. So that important document you want to work on might not be accessible.

One of the solutions to this is called SafeSync Safesync from Trend Micro. It works by synchronising everything on your team’s remote devices, seamlessly and automatically in the background. So you can access files on your device and it will automatically be backed-up, giving you both access and security.

The cost is based on the number of users and storage space needed, so there will be a package available that suits your need.

SafeSync isn’t the only method we have of doing this but a big advantage is that you don’t have to guess which device something might be stored on. Have you ever wanted to find a particular tune or photo but can’t remember if it’s on your phone or tablet? With SafeSync it doesn’t matter as you can access it from any device, regardless of which one you thought it was stored on.