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Honest VARs and MSPs face problems with cloud storage services
If you’ve been in the IT industry for awhile, you’ve no doubt noticed that it goes through one hype cycle after another. Many of us witnessed the dot-com explosion, implosion and subsequent MSP market conversion. Watching the cloud hype cycle of the past few years is a little disturbing -- not because I lack excitement about the massive possibilities of distributed computing, utility billing, virtualization advancements and economies of scale; they are large parts of my company’s business model. What bothers me is the extent to which companies will go to make a claim about the cloud. The exaggerations and omissions -- stemming from either ignorance, lack of risk aversion or outright dishonesty -- being used to sell cloud computing and cloud storage services are just nauseating. As an officer of a company competing in this environment, it’s especially hard for me to ignore these problems with cloud storage.
How to Protect Your Company’s Data
As a computer systems network manager and member of the nonprofit High Tech Crime Consortium, Kevin McDonald has seen all manner of data disasters: the medical company whose patient treatment records were lost in a warehouse fire; the police department whose website host vanished overnight; even the careless employee whose leaky liter of Coke ruined a computer server. “If you are a small business and you have a catastrophic loss of data, more likely than not you will never recover,” says McDonald, executive vice president at Alvaka Networks in Irvine, Calif. “Data storage is so cheap now, if you can’t afford it you should shut your business down and do something else.”
“3900 Saturdays” Is One Of My Favorite Short Stories
I am not sure from where I first got it, but years ago someone e-mailed me a story titled "3900 Saturdays." I read it from time to time and I thougth I would share it with you. I don't know who the author is or I would provide attribution. I hope you find as impactful as I did.
The Hard Lessons Learned In Information Technology In 2011
What do you cite as the top IT lessons you learned 2011? I am talking about the hard lessons learned in IT management, administration, budgeting, buying, planning architecting and deployment last year? Based on those lessons what will you carry through 2012 and perhaps longer?
You Need To Check Out The New Ultrabook Computers
First there were the luggable computers in the early 1980s such as the Osborne I, Kaypro II and the Compaq. Then came the clam-shelled laptop computers like the first Toshiba and the Data General LCD screened battery powered units in the mid to latter 1980s. From then on laptops settled into the general form factors we see today, but then came the tablets and the netbooks about three years ago. The netbook form factor already seems to be waning as the iPad tablet is clearly dominating the market.
When Our Next One Hits Are You Prepared?
The 7.2 earthquake two weeks ago in Turkey got me thinking again about disaster preparedness and IT. It reminded me of the 5.9 earthquake that occurred on the U.S. east coast, a region that is not supposed to get earthquakes. I just did a couple of walk-throughs at two different client facilities. One had server racking very well secured at the top and bottom that looked like it would withstand a pretty severe shaking while the other site did not have any fasteners at either the top or the bottom of the server racks. I could have pushed the racks over myself by leaning on them.