So I get up like it’s any other day today. I go to work. But instead of going to the corner office I make a left-hand turn into the Technical Assistance Center – the TAC. I have my crazy glasses with the exaggerated mustache and nose to make light of the fact everyone knows I am there to see how the work really happens. Immediately, because it is a holiday/vacation week, I am asked to get moving. There is a firm schedule of tasks to be completed and with vacation schedules leaving the TAC short this week, I was put immediately to work on tasks I had no idea how to do.

The good news, we have a company wiki with all our processes detailed, and I was promptly directed to open up the wiki and read. So off I go to do the offsite tape rotations. Success! I read, follow instructions and all went fairly well. I was able to find the tapes, codes, keys and proper transport containers and get it all done. A little behind the normal schedule – our W.B. Meyers Vaulting courier was tapping his watch as I came through the door!

Next, getting on the phones to help answer the questions coming in from clients… Help with resetting passwords, re-registering certificates, updating disk quotas and remotely assisting with upgrading a desktop – all normal thing for our TAC. Everything took longer because I was there. Not a multi-tasker by nature, I wasn’t able to move from screen to screen while chatting about the weekend with the caller as ably as Chuck and Corey. (I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time either.) By the end, I was happy to know that we have capable, skilled team members assisting our clients (and that I could retreat back to my office!)

There are a couple changes the TAC has been asking management to consider to assist them in their daily tasks – now I see why. Armed with first-hand knowledge of why these items deserve top ranking on my to-do list, I now have my management job to do.

Where will the man with the crazy eyeglasses show up next?

Today a client said to me, “The Internet revolution was supposed to make everything faster and simpler. What happened to the ‘simpler?’”

Honestly, we get that a lot! That’s why on June 10^th Fandotech launched a significant new product line with the goal of simplifying what the “cloud” means to the average business person. We are proud to present our cloud-delivered solution suite, RAIN™.

Today it’s impossible to read an IT journal that isn’t singing the praises of cloud technology’s essential role in your company’s ability to move forward. And that is true; it is essential. But the value is not in the cloud itself (which is really just the Internet) but rather in the services it delivers to your organization in a targeted and meaningful way. And it needs to be simple. Everyone has the cloud. But only we make it RAIN™!

[Enter, the refreshing RAIN™!]

Fandotech’s cloud-delivered, RAIN™ suite will help your company grow with scalable solutions that expand and contract based on your needs.

We know that keeping up with technology is difficult when you really need to stay focused on your business operations. Our RAIN™ initiatives are all about putting “simpler” back into the promise of the Internet revolution.

• Strengths: Evaluate the strengths of your IT infrastructure. Some examples of an IT strengths could be:
  • High network availability.
  • Secure remote access for mobile workers.
  • A strong, comprehensive continuity plan.
• Weaknesses: These would be any area that could cause downtime, a security breach, or otherwise compromise the quality of your applications and services. Also included are variables like:
  • Staffing.
  • Support.
  • Applications facing obsolescence.
• Opportunities: These are areas that you can improve. Think of this as your area to develop a technology road map.
  • What services would you like to provide to your users?
  • How can you improve the availability of your systems?
  • Can you improve redundancies?
• Threats: Analyze the forces that can impact your business negatively. Evaluate all of your hardware and software.
  • Can you still get parts if you have a physical failure and your warranty has expired?
    
  • Is your software up-to-date with the latest supported versions?
  • Will your software vendor support you in a time of crisis?
  • Can current software support your business goals and objectives?
  • Is your data protected and secure, or is valuable company information found on hard drives, desktops and laptops instead of the server?

Once you have compiled a list for each topic you will begin to see a more comprehensive view of your network. In understanding the good, the bad, and the ugly of your corporate IT you can better determine which areas need an investment of time and resources.

I would also suggest that you evaluate the SWOT itself.  Go through the process and then compare the outcome of the study vs. whatever method you used last year. I’m confident you will be happy with the results.

“The Internet” has declared that a major change is coming. This will require some of our clients to have specific checks done on their network, particularly if they have older equipment that will not accommodate the changes. Routers and firewalls are the key elements that should be evaluated to verify they will be able to connect to Internet when the Internet changes the domain name system on July 1, 2010.

Who is this “Internet” and why are they changing?

The Internet is actually controlled by a coordinated group of International Authorities, Carriers and Data Center Providers (like Fandotech). On May 5, the world’s top domain authorities (led by ICANN, the US Government and VeriSign) completed the first phase of the roll-out of DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) across the 13 root servers that direct user requests to the relevant websites on the Internet. At that time Fandotech also verified its data center equipment to be in compliance with these changes.

This is technical stuff and most clients are happy not to have to concern themselves with operations issue that Fandotech routinely manages.

The DNSSEC upgrade adds a digital signature to the response from every DNS (Domain Name Server) request to give an Internet user an extra level of assurance that the domain name is translated to the correct Internet location, such as a website or email destination.

This improvement is important. For instance, some bad sites try to “put themselves in the middle” and make you think, for example, they’re American Express when in fact they are just capturing personal information leaving you vulnerable to identity theft. DNSSEC was developed in an attempt to thwart these ‘man in the middle’ attacks, in which hackers intercept a request and respond with a message that fools the user system into going to a false location.

This new change requires the Internet to send a longer packet to firewalls and routers to authenticate. Some older networking equipment may not be able to process these larger packets. As of July 1, 2010 we will all need to be ready!

What to look for:
So if after July 1, you are having intermittent problems getting to websites just call Fandotech! The problem may take several days to surface and be inconsistent from one user’s PC to the next. Symptoms will appear such that a user at one machine that hasn’t switched on his PC for two or three days will have no access to the Internet. A user that left his machine on the night before will have some pages and responses from DNS servers cached on their machine, and will still have connectivity.

Call Fandotech to run a series of online tests to ensure your network can handle the larger DNS responses!

So you hired an IT guy.  He’s a great kid and a wiz with computers.  In the office he’s considered an IT Rockstar! Your staff loves him!

He does a bang up job of keeping your network healthy, all anti-virus is up-to-date and most machines are current on patches. Even your backup appears to be successful every night.  Overall, your network’s running fine until…

• The server goes down and blue screens on reboot…
• or… He goes on vacation, and the system acts up…
• or… Your business needs change and you ask him for a plan to adapt…

Now what?

The image to the right depicts the norm.  Hired resources can generally satisfy the majority of IT tasks that the company requires, but inevitably there are gaps in their IT know-how. To the their credit, they probably have extra skills up their sleeve that will never be tapped by your organization.

Ultimately, you need a “Plan B” to fill the skill set gaps and help to manage the workload.

That introduces some additional challenges.  If you don’t have a “go-to” service provider that has a working knowledge of your IT environment you can expect adding time and cost, not to mention stress, when engaging them to solve a problem.

It’s  important to engage a true IT partner and outsource portions of your IT requirements to a managed service provider (MSP).

Benefits?

1. Having a firm that is engaged with you on a daily basis, even when things are running smoothly.
2. Utilizing 24 x 7 x 365 monitoring technology, an MSP’s network operations center (NOC) tracks, notifies and logs incidents as specified by your contracted needs.
3. Current asset inventorymaintained by your MSP allows them to respond quickly and precisely when issue arise.
4. Support escalation point for your IT Rockstarwhen a problem exceeds his knowledge base.

Productivity is lost and stress mounts when problems cannot be resolved quickly. By engaging an MSP your company will have the depth of resources equal to that of many Fortune 500 IT departments at a predictable fraction of the cost.

Behind every great Rockstar is a team of experts to help him perform and shine. Your IT Rockstar needs that support too!