Planning Your Technology Systems

For many small businesses, the pressure to increase sales and meet customer demands often takes so much time and effort that even those who are technically savvy don't have enough time for this critical area. Left unattended, or given the benign neglect that frequently characterizes a company where the technology works "well enough," small businesses often lack the best solutions for daily operations, protection against threats such as viruses and hackers, and business continuity in the event of a disaster. Companies also often leave money on the table because they do not make small regular investments to upgrade technology when it's appropriate and have the most cost-effective environment.

Keeping Your Computers & Network Safe & Secure

If the thousands of viruses threatening your information technology lifeline are not enough to keep you awake at night, add worms, Trojan horses, and other elements such as ActiveX or JavaScript that are frequent tools of hacker exploits to the mix. Still sleeping soundly? Multiply by several communication protocols and dozens of ports and it's a wonder that anyone can figure out what's going on and how to protect your information assets.

So you're at home and suddenly remember you need something from your office computer (or vice-versa). Or you're already out of town on that business trip, or vacation. And what you forgot is something important, promised to someone, or on a deadline. You have a choice: blow off the promise you made, get up and go to the other location, or…get GoToMyPC from ExpertCity (http://www.gotomypc.com) and let the internet work for you. This nifty service lets you use any computer connected to the internet to access your home or office computers from afar.

We know that business today requires substantial information technology investments. And we have learned that the real cost is not the hardware or the software, but the "human capital" that goes into setting up, running, and maintaining the technology necessary to your business goals. Whether it's your time, your employees', or the contractor you've engaged to maintain your IT infrastructure, these "soft costs" are substantial and far outweigh the capital investment in hardware, software, networking and communications technologies and services.

Dell announced a broad range of price cuts for its computers on August 20, and on June 16, a memo by Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, sent to Microsoft employees and widely reported in the press sounded the theme of "doing more for less." You're running a small to medium size enterprise (SME), and wondering, in today's economy, how to squeeze the rind to get the last drop of juice from your investments in technology. Microsoft and Dell say they're here to help you. What should you do? Stand pat and applaud them for their sentiments? Or make further investments, upgrading your hardware and software?

Most small businesses, and many of my clients, lack the resources to have full-time staff providing troubleshooting and technical support when systems go awry. Even among those who have full-time staff, few have the range of expertise to handle the complexity of today's software, let alone the interactions among all software and hardware components in the system. This means that calls to vendors for technical support are often part of the routine for resolving problems.

It’s time for predictions, resolutions, and unashamed borrowing, with attribution, from leading sources of information about new developments. By the time technology news hits the big time it’s already been hanging about, sometimes for years, in the research labs and in write-ups in publications such as MIT’s Technology Review or Scientific American. And even then, if you were inclined to focus on smaller, niche-oriented newsletters, you could obtain the news about the “next big thing” even sooner – an open invitation to make investments that might push your risk indicator right off the scale, but that also might make you a very wealthy investor.

I know you’ve all taken my advice and have well-established backup routines to protect your business’s valuable data, and that you’ve been very thorough and tested your backup systems to make sure that your data can be restored. But where can you turn you’re your hard drive fails and you must recover something that either didn’t get backed up (accidents happen) or whose restoration fails (no system is perfect)?

Recent press accounts are connecting the dots between computing attacks and organized crime. Got a virus? A worm? Has someone been phishing on your web site or in your email? Chances are it’s not just a happy-go-lucky teenager in Milwaukee, but a hacker with links to organized crime. And don’t just think of it as the New York mob; it’s as global as the internet.

You’ve been good about buying new computers for your business, and your employees are satisfied, well-trained, and highly productive. But in that back storage room sit the remains of old computers that you thought you would pass along to your kids, or to some charitable group, or, well, someone. Keeping them company are old monitors, too small to effectively display the large amounts of data needed on-screen to work effectively, too large to keep on precious desktop or counter space. Then there are the keyboards, mice, and other input devices that have broken or been replaced by more ergonomic models to help your employees feel good and avoid repetitive stress injuries.

If you're a Microsoft customer, before you put money (and time) into the purchase and installation of an anti-spam software package, be sure that your support team or provider has explored the full capabilities of Windows Server 2003 and Office/Outlook 2003 versions. Microsoft, true to form, has seen a growth area exploited by early entrants who recognized a need. Unwilling to cede the market, and driven by customer concerns about the amount and cost of spam, Microsoft decided to wade into the pool with its own technology. The depth of Microsoft's research and increasing integration of its core Windows technologies show the promise of what the company can accomplish when it tries to help customers "do more with less" - especially when the "more" is upgrading to current versions of Microsoft products and buying "less" of third-party applications.

Since October, 2000, when the U.S. Congress enacted the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act(1) ("ESIGN") businesses have had the ability to enter into binding contracts executed electronically. Prior to the enactment of the ESIGN legislation, the privacy and authentication of electronic correspondence was achieved through the use of individual digital signatures or server-side certificates. Digital IDs prove that a message was sent by the sender and can secure the transmission channel between sender and receiver; with ESIGN, they are components of legally enforceable agreements executed electronically.