Blog

Is your infrastructure platform a team player?
On the football field, there’s no such thing as a one-man team. Even the most talented and athletic players know that they can’t do it alone; winning a championship requires individuals dedicated to putting the team first.

In IT, team chemistry counts
Winning on the football field is all about having the right team chemistry in the locker room. If the players don’t like each other, work well together, and complement each other’s skill sets, then there’s really no amount of practice or preparation that can make up for that.

Draft a Winner for your Hyperconverged Team
Fall is here, and that means the start of a new football season. Just like in IT, the teams that did the best job of preparing themselves are already rising to the top of the league. On the other hand, teams that failed to stock their rosters are in for a long season.

(This article was written by Joe Noonan and first appeared on Unitrends.com)

Your backup and DR solution costs too much.

Every few years, you get the illustrious job of reviewing your backup and disaster recovery strategy. Sure you could just renew your current contract, or try to pit another vendor against the incumbent, but when is the last time you took a hard look at the true cost of your backup solution? At ALL the costs related to backup and continuity? And did you know that you can actually simplify your solution and reduce the cost by more than 50%?

This blog will identify and describe your hidden costs, and give you access to a simple calculator that will quantify them for you.

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer and 4th largest company is looking to build a second headquarters in a North American city. As a faithful Austinite and loyal Amazon customer and business channel partner of Amazon Web Services, I felt the desire to weigh in.

In the 'Age of Sail' on our earth’s vast oceans, sailors were literally at the mercy of the wind and the waves. They didn’t have engines as a backup propulsion source when the the winds died down. When the tides turned and a ship and her crew were faced with daunting weather, a yell would sound out, “Hold Fast”!

To hold fast means to bear down… to grit it out and above all, stay the course.

Let’s face it, many small-to-medium sized businesses simply don’t have the budget to build out their own internal IT department.
When stuck in this situation, I’ve seen companies take two different approaches.

The first involves having a known acquaintance that “knows a thing or two about computers” be the company’s part-time/as-needed IT support.

Even if you invest in the latest IT technology, getting a return on your investment depends heavily on having the technical knowledge needed to truly make the most of that technology. As today’s IT solutions grow more advanced and integrated, the gaps in the skills and experiences of in-house IT teams are growing more pronounced, in addition to the risks created by those gaps.

Is IT Eating Your Lunch or Feeding Your Company?
As we continue to grow our “CIO for Hire” program, we continue to find the same issues hindering our clients growth. Here’s our “Top 10” list of ways that IT can eat your lunch:

Focus on machines: on the technology, rather than your strategy, your users, your people
Hindered collaboration: files sent as attachments, no version or access control, tasks sent in emails, no follow up etc.