Nobody likes a "gotcha" in any walk of life, and that certainly holds true in IT.  No one can argue that it pays to be prepared.  This is why we buy insurance, financial advice, medical checkups etc., etc.  

If there ever was an industry that perpetually promises “New and Improved,” it’s the IT industry. I can’t think of another high-ticket item that loses value and performance as quickly as a computer does. Selling a two-year-old computer is nothing like selling a two-year-old car, for example. You get my point.

Moore’s Law (which states that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles every two years) has given us computing power which grows exponentially over time (which is partially why computers don’t hold their value, by the way). I think we all naturally assumed that because of this never-ending improvement, computers would eventually become nearly trouble-free.

Gerald is a long-time owner of a substantial construction business, and like most successful business owners, he trusts his own wits and intuition in making business decisions. His keen mind is ultimately what got him to success, so why not keep betting on a winner? But Gerald also knows his limitations.

Last year his intuition was acting up a bit, and he was nagged by a persistent fear of losing valuable data. He finally decided to reach out to me to see if Promethius could audit his backup and disaster-recovery plan. Were there chinks in the armor? We would find out.

NOTE: I want to give you a bit of a warning before I start this article. My writing style is generally up-beat, jovial and fairly casual. Don’t let this style mask the fact that today’s topic is very serious. Please know that this article is written in a spirit of urgency and importance.

O.K. Now on to the article…

Virtual Desktops, sometimes referred to as “Cloud Desktops,” are the next major improvement vastly approaching the computer network landscape (actually, this new technology is already in production today – we use it here at Promethius). We’ve been in business for over sixteen years, and we think this technology will be the biggest “game changer” we have ever seen.

I gained a deep understanding of “disaster recovery” in the best situation imaginable. I was a programmer/analyst for Northern Trust Bank, and for two years worked diligently on our “Y2K” disaster preparedness plan. To say the least, banks cannot afford to lose their data. The fear surrounding Y2K gave me an almost unlimited budget and access to endless resources.

Like so many other organizations, we passed through Y2K without a single glitch. Rather anti-climactic, but I learned a ton about disaster recovery.

A multi-location law firm recently reached out to us with several issues. Their staff was constantly complaining of slow computers, and certain offices sporadically lost their network connection all-together. “Down-time” in any business is a problem.

Backup was another issue. They couldn’t get their backups to reliably run, and the partners were losing sleep over visions of permanently-lost client files. They couldn’t take the risk any more, and so reached out for help.

Let’s face it, the internet has an absolutely hypnotic effect on people. Many employees sit at an internet-connected computer all day. Only the most disciplined can steadily do their work and keep from straying into endless internet abyss.

They don’t call it the World Wide “Web” for nothing!

At Promethius Consulting, because as a Managed Services Provider we manage so many computer networks in Indiana, we have a whole lot of experience with software licensing. It seems like licensing your software should be easy, right? In reality, it's anything but easy.

In fact, most networks that we inherit are found to be running several applications without a proper license. This can be a huge liability to an organization. Audits are real and monetary penalties are stiff. Software Licensing is one of those issues that most business owners overlook and are completely unaware of.

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 will officially sunset (support will end) on July 14th of 2015, so what does this actually mean? Well, luckily we have ample time to prepare for the end-of-life of Server 2003. What does it generally mean when Microsoft drops all support of an operating system anyway?