Having covered hardware and software on our journey towards IT Utopia, let’s talk about the most crucial information-technology asset: your data.

Based on our utopian-model, your hardware is relatively current, under warranty and well maintained. Your software is the current rev and supported by the vendor. Your staff is equipped with the knowledge to utilize your software tools productively and efficiently. What could go wrong?

How about power outage, fire damage, riot, earthquake, flood, disgruntled employees or even…(shudder, gasp)…hard-drive failure! The technically astute among you (no offense to the technical neophytes of course) will invariably cry, “In IT Utopia, we don’t buy servers without at least RAID 1, preferably 5 or 10, making us immune to data loss due to hard-drive failure!” To which I respond, “Bravo! But are you sure all of your business-critical data is on your servers? Did you buy RAID for all of your workstations, laptops and thumb drives!?”

Where is your data? Where is it created and, more importantly, stored? The obvious recommendation is that it be stored centrally on a device equipped with hardware redundancy (meaning that a single component failure will not result in data loss).
Redirect your users’ data to your server or NAS or SAN. Don’t give them a choice! Make it a procedural imperative or, better yet, a technical control. Use a centralized or hosted email solution, so that you don’t have to worry about the end-user’s email data store, which is likely business-critical data. Then use a solid, commercial backup tool to backup your data, as well as a server imaging solution to take a nightly or weekly snapshot of your entire server system (allowing for bare-metal recovery to new hardware or virtual server), store copies of your data off-site, and rest easy!

Using this methodology, I have successfully recovered from catastrophic server hardware failure in a production environment in 45 minutes.

“What about workstations?” Remind your users that the workstations are tools, belong to the company and that personal customization is not allowed. Have a standard set of applications installed on all workstations, keep your data stored centrally, and use an inexpensive imaging tool to build, deploy and maintain. Spyware problems? Virus issues? Quirky Windows problems? Spend about 15 minutes troubleshooting and, if not resolved, NUKE it (I mean re-image but that doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic)! Again, I have literally used this methodology to take a trashed workstation to clean and pristine while the user took a slightly extended coffee break.

I am planning on one more post in this series (The Myth of Managed Services…if that title doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will!), and then we’ll return to some more web-centric topics. I confess to feeling a bit lonely, as no one is posting inflammatory comments or emailing me questions or suggestions (patterson “at” flexiss.net). I see the hit counter growing, so I know I have at least one fan (Hi, Mom!). Anyhow, feedback would be cool…see you next time for…The Myth of Managed Services!

Software…the bane of our existence! No wait, that’s healthcare or Google Buzz? In any case, to quote myself, “There are three primary struggles when it comes to the business value of your applications: usability (learning how to use the product combined with what it can and cannot do for you), cost (upfront and ongoing), and support.” Lets talk about cost and support.

There’s not much point in belaboring upfront cost. This is usually obvious and painful. There are myriad factors to determining which application is best for your business needs, but I can’t speak to that with authority unless you hire me as your contract CIO for a very reasonable fee. However, I would like to suggest that ongoing support costs, the longevity of the product, the support lifecycle and your support relationship with the vendor are oft overlooked and may even be more critical than the upfront expenditure.

You should expect to spend in the range (this is a generalization but generally accurate) of 10-20% of the total cost of the application for support per year. This varies somewhat depending on whether you are paying strictly for support or for support with software assurance. These numbers are negotiable and the best time to negotiate them is when you are considering writing the vendor a very large check for the initial purchase! Although, in this current economy, vendors are more flexible and willing to re-negotiate to retain your business.

Attempt to get a service-level agreement (guaranteed response times, guaranteed uptimes, penalties for failure to meet the SLA). Negotiate support payments for the duration you anticipate using the product (two years, five years, etc). Often vendors will agree to a fixed price for year one with a cap on percentage increase for the remaining year or two or three. Make certain you understand the product roadmap. How long do they anticipate supporting this product? How does the vendor manage planned obsolescence, because even if they won’t admit it, they do!

Once you are confident you have negotiated the best possible deal and are secure in the details for the support and maintenance agreement: buy it. Buy it the first year, the second year, the third year…you get the idea. Relate to is as a business requirement. If you are going to use the application as a business tool, you must keep it in good working condition. You must keep current on the fixes and updates. You must have someone to call who is an expert with the product, can answer your questions, give you instruction and fix it when it breaks. Don’t call me! Don’t call your aforementioned uncle Larry, unless he happens to be an ex-employee for the vendor in question!  Call the experts and get to work.

Lets talk about software as a business enabler, as a tool. Whether you use Excel, PhotoShop, AutoCAD, Quickbooks or SolidWorks, it is likely that you depend heavily on any number of business applications (software). There are three primary struggles when it comes to the business value of your applications: usability (learning how to use the product combined with what it can and cannot do for you), cost (upfront and ongoing), and support.
Lets tackle them in order.

Usability:

Not all applications are created equal. It is likely that no one taught you to use Internet Explorer or even Microsoft Outlook. It is, however, unlikely that you sat down to unlock the mysteries of PhotoShop or SolidWorks all by yourself, as these are complex, extremely powerful, not terribly intuitive tools. In either case (IE or PhotoShop), most users utilize a tiny percentage of the power of their business applications and, even at that, do so inefficiently.

Consider the value of training. Would you put a staff member in front of the assembly line,  ultra-sound or even pizza oven and say, “Good luck figuring out how to run it! We’ll expect you to be productive by the end of the day!”

For some applications, like Microsoft Office, there are a plethora of training resources: books, online, on-site, etc. For others, particularly specialized applications, you’ll likely have to send someone out of town or fly someone in.

Finding the right resource, the resource that works for you and your staff is critical.

Some scattered thoughts in this regard:

• Lecture is the worst possible method for knowledge transfer. It just doesn’t stick.
• Hands-on is a requirement for software training: people learn and retain what they do.
• Consider a train-the-trainer approach, particularly with specialized applications. Find an in-house resource, send them to class and let them train the rest of your staff upon their return.
• IMPORTANT: Your most savvy technical user is likely the WORST candidate for being your trainer! Trust me: it comes easy to them, they expect it to come easy to others and their presentation/people skills are likely minimal.

The ROI for business application training is consistently validated. As much as I dislike the phrase and as oxymoronic as it may sound…training is a no-brainer!