But while we are quick to criticise the country’s broadband, have you looked at your own in-house network lately and how ready is your network infrastructure to handle all the new wireless devices and associated volumes of traffic that are coming down the line in the next couple of years?

I recently worked with two educational organisations who wanted to create wireless networks to support the many and growing number of wireless devices being used in the education sector.

The first organisation have installed standard wireless access points which have to be managed separately  and require each wireless device to be registered with each and every access point. There is no facility to segregate traffic for  security of performance reasons.

The second organisation have installed a much more comprehensive meshed wireless network that will allow devices to register with the network as a whole rather than with each access point individually. They also have the ability to segregate wireless traffic by groupings such as Staff, Students, Guests, voice, video, etc. They will also have the ability to replace/upgrade individual access points without requiring devices to re-register on the network.

As the volumes of traffic grow on wireless networks, the time and expertise required to manage and maintain the first wireless network will grow dramatically, locking them into support contracts with recurring costs and frequent hardware upgrades.

The second organisation should be able to manage their own wireless network. They will have to upgrade the hardware much less frequently and when they to have to upgrade they will be able to do it on a phased basis.

While the second organisation paid twice as much for the initial wireless network, the life-time costs (taking into account, initial purchase, service/support, maintenance and upgrades) for the second organisation will be less than 50% of the first organisation.

As a friend of mine in the construction sector said when we were talking about this issue. “It’s like building two houses, one with no insulation and one with full insulation. The house with no insulation will be 25% less to build but will be 200% more to run and maintain on an annual basis”.

• The Accounts/ERP Systems people were saying it was a Network Problem.
• The LAN/WAN people were saying it was a Citrix/Remote Access problem.
• The Citrix/Remote Access people said it was a Broadband/Bandwidth problem.
• The Broadband people said it was a CCTV Remote Viewing issue.

I could go on, but the net result was the customer was left “Holding the Baby” and the problem was dragging on for weeks, causing huge disruption and making the IT Systems unusable for a large proportion of the working day.

Because the company had no In-House IT resource or an Independent IT Professional who had no vested interest to call upon, the individual suppliers were able to quote technical terms at the customer and blame everyone else.

After looking at the problem and talking to all the suppliers we were able to establish that the problem was caused by a number of issues;

• The Security company was inadvertently streaming CCTV from the customer site 24 Hours a day using large amounts of bandwidth. We were able to get them to only stream video based on event triggering.
• The LAN/WAN people had added an extra broadband connection to the VPN and the routing of traffic over the networks had not been adjusted to take advantage of the new connection.
• The Citrix and Broadband suppliers had not co-ordinated and optimised their parameters to make sure they were working to maximise the speed of the connection.
• There had been an upgrade to the ERP System that installed a module which was not required, but was using large amounts of the server processing power.

We were able to increase the overall performance of the systems by 80% in a few days and by 100% within a couple of weeks.

Because of our depth of experience, gathered over twenty five years in various industries and business sectors, we were able to get to the root cause of the issues and allow the company to concentrate on their core business and stop wasting time arguing with the various IT Suppliers.

If you find yourself in this type of situation, don’t wast time fighting with IT Suppliers. Talk to an Independent IT Professional who will ultimately save you a lot of time and money. Better still develop an ongoing relationship with a professional who knows your system and can make sure any changes don’t have a knock on affect on  your existing systems.

Each attendee gets to highlight their business or service and meet like minded business people in North Wexford.

At last Friday’s meeting  Michael Doyle of Doyle Associates cave a very practical presentation on how small businesses can take practical steps to manage their money in these tough times.

If you are in business in North Wexford or South Wicklow these events are worth attending.

Well you can very easily get remote access to your computer systems and indeed communicate with your work colleagues.

The only thing you require is a Broadband Internet Connection. To access your computer systems you can either;

• Access your existing computer systems using a secure remote connection such as GoToMyPC. This is a hosted implementation of Citrix, which is a well established system used by many larger businesses to access their systems remotely and can cost as little as €12 per month.
• The second option is to consider using Software As A Service (SAAS)  for your main systems. SAAS means that your Integrated Accounts System / CRM systems are not installed on a computer in your office but are installed on a secure server in a Data Centre, which you access remotely using a secure connection. Examples in Ireland are Mamut and Eircom SAAS.

To keep in contact with your work colleagues all you require is Skype and you can talk, and if you have a webcam, have video calls for free.

So if you want to make sure that the next period of  bad weather doesn’t bring you business to a halt why not contact me in Glasgorman Computer Services HERE.

P.S. There is also a very strong argument that a small business can dramatically reduce it’s recurring infrastructure costs, regardless of weather etc. , by using technology to implement Remote Working for employees.

We have already come across several situations where companies have reduced their staff and have not reduced their corresponding recurring costs.

• Are you in a contract with your Mobile Phone provider that is designed for 10 phones and now only have 5 reps on the road.
• Are you paying annual Software Licenses, Software Maintenance and Hardware Maintenance for systems are no longer used.
• Do you still need the highest speed Broadband Connection when you have half the number of people using the connection?

So before you finalise those budgets take the time to review those costs, and if you feel that you are out of your depth, then talk to your Computer  Services provider and they can conduct a Business Technology or IT Audit for you.

Most small businesses do not have a full time IT person, instead the function is covered as a secondary part of somebodies job description or by their IT Provider who is usually only called when when there is a problem and doesn’t have time to look at the overall systems. As a result for most small businesses, their computer systems have evolved in a haphazard way rather than grown in a planned structured and documented way.

This is not necessarily a problem when you are dealing with a small number of computers, small quantities of data and everything is going fine, however when something goes wrong or a computer breaks down then this can be a real issue. In a well structured small business network, all business data will be stored centrally on a server (or at least on one desktop that is designated as a server). With all the data in one location it is easy to backup and if it comes to it, restore. If one of the desktops gives up the ghost then that’s not a major problem, just go to another PC and access the centrally stored data.

If on the other hand everyone is storing their data on their local hard disk, then it becomes very difficult to co-ordinate backups and make sure that critical data is not lost if there is a failure on an individual PC. It is relatively easy to fix or replace computer hardware and software but nothing can be done if there is no backup for the data.

The second issue when it comes to these unstructured networks is that there is probably very little security for the data and that means that you are failing to meet your obligations under the Data Protection Act.

In the vast majority of cases the solution does not usually cost very much and generally does not require the purchase of new computers. A good computer services company should be able to organise the network using the existing equipment and put an Online Backup solution in place to ensure your data is backed up securely.

If you can establish a relationship with a local Computer Services company who understands your business and can document your systems and some simple procedures, then the time taken to recover from major system failures can be greatly reduced, which can save you money and give you peace of mind.

The final point is that you should view your computer systems the way you view your car. If your car does not get serviced at least once a year then things go wrong a lot more often and you can dramatically reduce it’s life span. Your computer systems are no different. An annual Preventative Maintenance visit can eliminate the majority of issues before the arise.

When your business is small and you are starting off in business it is very easy to keep track of all your communications with your clients and for that matter communications between employees, but as you grow and start to expand your business that’s not so easy any more. That’s when some things start to fall through the cracks and you don’t keep in contact with your customers quite so often. Studies have shown that the main reason customers stop doing business with you is that they perceive that you don’t care or don’t value their business.

This is where a good CRM (Customer Relationship Marketing) system comes in. A good CRM system will allow everyone in your organisation too maintain those contacts with your customers and not only retain customers but grow the business.

Similarly in these recession times your employees can be spread much thinner on the ground and particularly if you have people on the road it’s difficult to work as a cohesive team and get that pool of knowledge and skills to be passed around between employees. That’s where good collaborative software can really help.

Unfortunately both CRM and Collaborative software systems can require significant amounts of IT and computer infrastructure to run effectively and apart from the capital costs to install them these systems, they require expertise in terms of IT Personnel to keep them running efficiently. That means extra recurring costs that your business can ill afford at this time.

But there is an potential answer, Software as a Service or to put it another way rent the software . That way all those complicated bits like servers, firewalls, networks, ups, databases, backups and the IT people to keep it all running smoothly are in a hi-tech data center and all you need is remote access via a broadband connection. From a business and budgeting point of view you don’t have any capital outlay and have predictable monthly costs.

It is these things that can give you the edge over your competitors in tough times.

For Business Broadband in Gorey and North Wexford check out Alpha Broadband