It is important to consider key aspects of your infrastructure early in the business start-up phase to prevent larger, more costly problems in the future. Consider the computers and mobile devices involved with running your business and the data contained on those systems.
How accessible is the data and what happens when (not if) one of those systems fails. Proper setup and configuration of your Intranet and Local Area Networking (LAN) ensures important information is accessible between computers thereby making your employees more efficient.
Networked file servers can be a relatively inexpensive means of storing large amounts of data. A Network Attached Server (NAS) is a computer appliance usually configured for redundant storage (RAID array) with a web-based administrative control panel to configure user accounts and access privileges. These NAS devices provide an affordable means to establish a first line of defense against data loss.
Having a solid plan in place for disaster recovery is one of the mistakes most often made by small businesses. We like to believe that is just would not happen to us, perhaps because we just invested a small fortune in buying new hardware. However, I can tell you that having provided technical support services to small businesses in the last decade, I was able to witness the numerous problems and the associated costs involved with trying to recover valuable business data from a computer system when it refuses to boot. Storage prices continue to drop everyday and online data storage is also a very efficient means of protecting your business data when technology chooses to work against you.
Mobile devices provide the much needed convenience of making our technology portable. At the same time, it adds another layer of complexity in terms of learning curves, data management and disaster recovery. Making the right decisions regarding laptops, smart phones and tablets, and the competing operating systems that run these devices can often be overwhelming for the small business owner who just wants technology to work!
And of course, you can’t have a discussion about Information Technology without considering email, the lifeline for business communications today. While email is certainly a core aspect of IT and our daily digital lives, for our purposes we are considering this aspect in our next discussion regarding the more publicly visible aspects of your business.
Gnarly Crumb has experience managing and utilizing these technologies and more, and will help you make the right decisions in advance to minimize the short-term and long-term expenses, and prevent the often catastrophic technological and small business failures.
As always, we welcome your comments and feedback. Or contact Gnarly Crumb now to get started.
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