I was recently reading The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. I was intrigued by the title. Who wouldn’t love to learn how to cut their work week by 95%! As far as I’m concerned the concept of the four hour work week is pure fiction, but the book’s concepts? Doable. (1) Delegate and (2) automate. The message is clear, if the task is not related to the growth of my business and increased customer satisfaction and service, I should delegate it to someone else. By no means will this alone get me to a four hour work week but it should help me complete my weekly tasks much more efficiently and effectively.

Sounds simple, but is it? I had fallen into the all too familiar trap of taking on more work than I was capable of finishing. Thinking back to the start of my first company, there were only two of us in the entire operation. I took on the chief, cook, and bottle washer mentality that everything has to be done by me. The problem is, that idea doesn’t scale. My company grew; more engineers, more partners, a bigger team… yet I continued to personally take on tasks that rightly belonged to other capable individuals.

So what suffered? The obvious would be (should you talk to my wife) my home life. As my work weeks grew from 45 hours to nearly 60, my mind was constantly focused on the tasks I had yet to complete. Second, my clients. In many cases their simple requests fell to the back of the line as I was drowning in administrative tasks. Last was my staff. I was not challenging them on a day-to-day basis. I was keeping work that would have been better directed to my team. I was limiting their professional growth.

So I’ve embarked on a journey of looking at what I do each day and delegating tasks that do not help me grow our business or enhance customer service. First, I found my team was eager to take on new responsibilities; usually doing a better and more thorough job. Additionally, it has afforded me more time to catch up with my clients. Through regular conversations I’m able to help my clients reach their current set of business objectives.

I’m sure many of you are like me, feeling that ‘there’s no way anybody can do the things that I can do as well as I can do them.’ The reality is when you take on too much; all work becomes subpar. But when you delegate it to those who have the time and resources to really give due attention to a given task, it will always be done better and more efficiently. I constantly need to remind myself that I hired each person on my staff because I see qualities in each of them that I don’t possess myself; delegate to their strengths!

I’ve taken the steps in my professional life to automate tasks that don’t help me achieve business growth. I’ve used my support system to assist me in time-consuming chores including collections, product quotes, managing marketing campaigns, and first level customer service. In doing this my time has been freed up to find more business, speak more frequently with my clients, and market our new product suites. And, might I add, it is liberating! I’m beginning to reap the benefits that come from working a more realistic work week. (i.e. “Hi Kids, remember me I’m your Dad!”)

So what does this have to do with managed services?
Managed service by definition is a service to which you delegate your IT functions to a provider who in turn acts as the automation that gets IT done in the background while you focus on your core business objectives. By delegating to Fandotech you free up yourself and your internal IT staff allowing them to get back to the business of your business.

Call on Fandotech to help you find other ways you can delegate and automate your IT tasks and processes. Liberate yourself from the IT chores cluttering your path to success. Then maybe you can achieve a 4-hour work week. Good luck!

Brian Doyle

If you’ll permit the grandiosity, I believe that virtualization is the best thing since the invention of sliced bread (probably even better than that, actually). I say this because Fandotech has been in the throes of virtualizing much of itself recently and is seeing the benefits of this effort. When I say we’ve been “virtualizing,” I should probably tell you what I’m talking about and how this can benefit you. Here’s the breakdown:

The Old Way
Let’s discuss a hypothetical typical client that hosts an ecommerce website on their own servers (not shared with other clients). To do this the old way, they’d need one or more physical servers.

Typically, the website itself will be hosted on one physical server that is connected to the Internet. That server also has a “backdoor” network connection to a second server hosting the database. This second server is not connected directly to the Internet, thus offering greater security for the database. Two servers in this example so far, but there might be more for various reasons. Each server is chewing up resources, has an ugly carbon footprint, and costs the client real dollars. Each server also takes up physical space and is turned on and operating 24/7/365. And, sadly, each server is probably not engaged to its capacity, so resources are wasted as these servers idle away the days, months, and years.

The New Way
There’s now a better and far more efficient way to use resources and still securely host an ecommerce website, likely with improved performance and other advantages. Our client will need one or more virtual servers.

A virtual server is all the data from the physical server’s hard drive. For instance, it’s everything the old server was except for the hardware. In our example, the ecommerce client will need two of these virtual servers, one for the website and another for the database.

These virtual servers will be housed on a host server. But, from this point forward, the rest of the infrastructure is our responsibility. We do all of this already, so the client can just “move in.”

Host servers are highly capacious, beefy, herculean servers that can host numerous virtual servers. They have the hard drive space, memory capacity, and processing power to operate the functions of multiple virtual servers, with each virtual server being walled off from the others (each operates in a virtual shell, as if the other “servers” weren’t there).

Two or more host servers that are linked together are called a cluster. Clusters provide enhanced security, performance, and data redundancy. In a cluster, one host server can back up another, or it can provide additional hosting space. Basically, the cluster increases capacity and provides redundancy in case of hardware failure.

The Benefits
At the time of this writing, we’ve migrated 42 of our servers onto a cluster of 5 virtual servers. Those old servers? Unplugged and recycled (or repurposed for worthy causes). The resources needed to run 5 host servers are far less than those needed to run 42 typical physical servers. The carbon footprint, impressively less. Those five powerful host servers are able to deliver improved performance over the 42 old servers of various makes, models, and horsepower. And if performance begins to lag, another host server can be added to the cluster to expand its overall capacity and relieve any bottlenecks.

What about our hypothetical ecommerce client? They benefit from a smaller monthly hosting fee for two virtual servers versus two physical servers. They sleep better at night (we imagine), knowing they’re helping to save the environment. They can take advantage of swift, easy, and relatively cheap expansion possibilities. And they likely enjoy faster performance and no hardware maintenance woes.

Does all that sound good? If so, contact your account representative to discuss how virtualization can benefit your business. If you’d like to learn more, we’re also offering a Virtualization event (see its ad in this newsletter). The time is right for this change, both economically and ecologically.

As management concepts go, most are encouraged by our interactions with others. This article was directly encouraged by a blog I read from Sondra Delaripa of ECHN…

Question: Three frogs sat on a rock by a sunlit pond. One frog decided to jump in. How many frogs were left?

Answer: Three.

Deciding to do something is not the same as actually doing it.

One has to act on a decision in order for something to change. Deciding to do something is only a small part of the process. Acting on that decision is the crucial moment. Many successful endings have been tragically averted because of inaction on a decision.

This principle is true from the initial discussion about a new technology direction, to contract signing, to the actual installation and operation. How many times have we spent hours, months even, deciding what to do? We consult our colleagues, our friends, Google and then we mull it over.

Once we’ve successfully worked that problem to a decision, we pat ourselves on the back, dreaming of the benefits and prosperity this new idea will bring to our business. Basking in the glory of our accomplishment, we proudly inform everyone of this new decision. Yes, we have decided; and it was hard work! We feel very, very accomplished!

Time passes and we see no change. No difference. No action. We’ve neglected to implement our brilliant idea!

That’s not an option for a data center. Being an operational facility, our clients depend on our actions every day. When we at Fandotech are managing updates or incidents that affect the service delivered to our clients, we continually stress to our team that indecision is a thief of precious time. The most brilliant technical team is worthless if they can’t or don’t implement their skills in an accurate and timely manner. It is acting swiftly and purposefully that keeps our business, and the businesses of our clients, online.

The next time you’re faced with a decision, make certain you don’t neglect the most important part of the decision, the action.

Thank you Sondra for the reminder.

John W. Boyd, Jr.

Email is one of the most utilized and yet most misunderstood tools in the workplace today. We type something, hopefully check it for correct spelling and grammar, hit “send,” and almost as if by magic it appears in someone else’s mailbox. This simple transaction happens hundreds of times a day for me, so when it occasionally doesn’t work I get frustrated and want it fixed. The technicians have helped me compile a checklist of things I can check before escalating to them, and I will share them with you:

1. Make sure you can get to the Internet. Try browsing to common websites like Google and MSN to make sure your email issue isn’t an Internet service provider issue.

2. Know your full email address, username, and password. If Fandotech hosts your email, we use a standard format for your email address, but we don’t keep your password for security reasons. If you’ve lost it, let us know and we can help reset it for you. If we don’t host your email, unfortunately, there is little we can do.

3. Ensure that no one sent you any new email. We’ve had people call us and exclaim, “I’m not getting any email!” when it was, in fact, because no one had sent them any email. If you can confirm someone sent you email, then we can start from there.

4. Please include any error messages you receive. Try to include the entire bounce back email you receive since our technicians need the whole thing in order to determine the root cause of the issue. You can email it to support@fandotech.com, include it in the service request you create, or print the email and fax it to us.

5. Ask yourself if you’re checking email in more than one place. When you use your desktop, Blackberry, and laptop to check your email throughout the day you are using 3 different devices. Depending on your hosting setup, this could cause various symptoms.

6. Tell us what you’re using for an operating system and email program. Most people are using Windows XP or Vista, and knowing whether it is a Home or Pro edition makes a difference. There can be issues working within the same email program with a different year, like Outlook 2000, 2003 and 2007.

We at Fandotech are here to help get your business email back up and running. Preparing your service call or entering your ticket with answers to the items above will help us get you back to work. And if you’re not satisfied with your current email hosting solution, ask us how we can help improve your experience.

Sarah Marino