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IT Budget: Items To Remain

For the majority of IT managers and CIOs we have come to the closing of the year. The budgets are in front of us, and we have to decide how we can get the maximum out of the available funds. If we plan carefully enough, and with some luck, we can get through the rough times. Planning and doing it well is what we can and have to do. During planning, it is always easy to miss the items that are possible, but not so obvious at a first glance. Let’s start with out IT pros. Budgeting for staff is highly correlated with your business.

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IT Budget: Items To Remain

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Business Travelers: Here Are The Backup and Security Tips You Need

People often overlook backups of their personal computers and by the time they lose files they go around in panic trying to come back to normal (to avoid that March 31st is the World Backup Day – to remind people at least once a year to backup their documents). But if you are a business user, an executive, you cannot just offload everything to IT and go on with your heart’s desire. Not only you have corporate responsibilities but also there are tasks you need to take care of yourself. Here is my collection of tips from the field, from my interactions with the traveling business users. Backup first. The importance of having regular backups has been voiced by pretty much everybody and I will emphasize it once again. Have regular backups. Just purchase a small, USB drive and keep it connected to your computer and setup backup from Windows or Time Machine if you are a Mac user.

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Business Travelers: Here Are The Backup and Security Tips You Need

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IT Managers: Where To Use Self-Service To Save Time

IT managers for years are pressed by the cliché of “doing more with less.” IT pros already have their daily tasks of user requests, incidents, maintenance issues, upgrades and infrastructure changes and plus they are asked to keep up with the new technology. But the headcount remained flat during the years. One of the things the IT managers do is to implement self-service where they can in order to have a breathing space for their teams. And surprisingly, the end users have an acceptance on self-service, too. Of course it does not work for every situation, but here are some areas where it is working. If we are speaking about a large company with 1000+ users, user identity management is the first place to start. With user identity, I am talking about the user provisioning that starts with the hiring process, continues with onboarding until the employee finishes its contract. During the “corporate lifecycle” of the employee, there will be switching of departments, various password resets, new rights/permissions requests and the like.

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IT Managers: Where To Use Self-Service To Save Time

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The Art of Choosing a Web Host

When it comes to choosing a web host most of us don’t even know where to start. There are hundreds of companies out there each promising 99% uptime, unlimited everything, and knowledgeable support. While it’s tempting to just sign up for a free host, there are a lot of factors to keep in mind, and you’ll often find that a paid host is much more beneficial in the long run. How do you decide if a web host is reliable? There has to be a way to make an accurate decision. Let’s consider some basic criteria to help you choose the best plan. Cost This is the aspect most of us will look at first when choosing a hosting provider.

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The Art of Choosing a Web Host

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CIO Perspective: Make Sure Your Disaster Recovery Plans Are Complete

have talked extensively on disaster recovery (DR) plans and I was pretty sure that I have covered everything. From the concept of moving DR to the cloud , including the issues to consider , to CIO tips , from choosing the right DR software to the people perspective, I thought my words on the DR was complete. Wrong. Here is an overall check on your DR plans, right from the field, assuming that you already have your business impact analysis. Do you have a written plan? Is that obvious? Don’t be so sure. I have seen medium sized businesses who have “complete DR plans” in “somebody’s mind” that will be implemented when something goes wrong

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CIO Perspective: Make Sure Your Disaster Recovery Plans Are Complete