@scottalanmiller said:
Absolutely. The need for a server "in house" reduces every day while the need for one "somewhere" increases every day. Having services in house, when there is not an enterprise datacenter in house, is increasingly rare.
Well I am excited, this means any potential client I meet might need cloud services to fix the pain points their business is having.
@Minion-Queen said:
I like the Bad Queen Society and Bad Queen and her minions
:metal: Woo hoo :metal:
@lillucia well that explains it!
Good to know...working on blog/newsletter stuff this weekend and wanted to be current and correct!
I started my business with mostly residential clients and 1 dentist office in 2003. Somewhere about that time was the MS push for a businesses first server. The small businesses I did break/fix for didn't seem to need that, or I just didn't see the possibilities. These businesses didn't share files and had 2-10 PCs. These days, it seems so much is available in the Cloud. Finally small businesses can get Exchange, Sharepoint, and business class OneNote using Office 365. Zendesk provides a great help desk, Wave accounting is growing daily, RepairShopr for IT ticketing, invoicing, CRM is just some of the items my business uses.
In fact cloud services almost remove the need for a businesses first server, or does it. What do you guys think?
Well that does make sense...who wants to be "that guy" who suggested crappy technology! And yes, I get the whole I have the product/technology and lets make it work in the wrong situation. I see that in small business a lot! Which is prompting me to post something new.
@Bill-Kindle said:
@technobabble said:
What's IE? Just kidding. By the way if users don't use IE and wait for normal W8.1.1 updates are they vulnerable still?
It affected all IE versions, including 11.
I got that @Bill-Kindle, but I wanted to know if they don't use IE are they still vulnerable? Many of my clients are residential or break/fix business clients and most don't use IE.
@scottalanmiller said:
SMBs often jump to wanting to buy a SAN without really considering the benefits that will actually be provided and the trade offs that will be imposed. I wrote this article originally for Datamation and it was later picked up additioally by SMB IT Journal to address this very subject and help SMBs to evaluate when a SAN makes sense for them. This ended up running on Datamation's front page for a full year which is a record for me and, for what I can tell, a record for the site. It's never been linked here and I think that it is a valuable resource so here it is....
Do You Really Need a SAN on Datamation
And here is SMB IT Journal's copy of the same article: When to Consider a SAN on SMB IT Journal
Wow...here we go again with the SAN/no SAN argument. From a small biz IT provider, I felt like I was being mentored by peer on why I usually use other storage devices other than SAN. I have agreed with this sentiment from my perusing the subject, but as a small biz IT provider, vendors and other bit IT peeps seem to want to add that to the mix immediately without asking other questions. In fact on SW I posted a question similar to one I posted here on ML and SW peeps almost immediately went to SAN and virtualization, however on SW you guys actually asked questions about my enviroment (shout out to @alexntg for link for finding out my needs with dell software).
I checked out SMB IT Journal's copy and the comments seem to favor SAN. I like ASUS Transformer Series tablets a lot, but that's not going to consider other vendors or even Apple or MS tablets.
Ninja turtles...you have a shred(der)! You could get a van...and a groupie/reporter...
@Reid-Cooper said:
Sadly those are all of the lyrics to that. And they ended up out of order.
And not correct either...shh...Google told me
@alexntg said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Looks like the hands are bleeding.
It's not a clap. It's stigmata.
LOL!!
I would have to say meetings can be good or bad depending on who is in charge and if they actually want something to come from the meeting. Meetings with clients about projects or potential products always seem to end up the same way. A total waste of time, nothing gets decided and I usually get the privilege to sit through 2-3 more meeting in the year going over the same stuff. I feel there needs to be better documentation on my side and perhaps color pictures on their side. I know tech can be overwhelming, but for M&P small businesses it can be a challenge. Perhaps because I am break/fix for these clients, that could be part of the problem.
The meetings usually start from a pain point that either they or I find. The next meetings are to talk about the same problem again. The solutions and prices are usually the same and no go ahead is ever discussed and then we have another meeting. If I am lucky to actually get a meeting about Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning, its just not sexy enough for them to take seriously. In fact it would be better to just talk some more about the other issues that they aren't spending money on. And of course I don't charge for the meetings, perhaps I should. I should probably be charging for research too.
@scottalanmiller said:
Physical UPSs are good for decades if not abused. Don't replace unless these is something wrong with them.
I have always replaced the unit not the batteries, especially if they are the old white APCs. Then again, I can hear the voice of the client, "it's only $20 more to get a new one"
So I just did a test online for the APC Back-UPS ES 550:
replacement: http://staples.com: $71.99, http://bestbuy.com $74.99 (Back-Ups 600)
battery: http://batteriesplus.com $29.99-34.99, refurbups.com $21.99 + 10.43 for UPS Ground shipping = $32.42
I'm sold on the idea of the battery replacement especially if I can tell the client that the units are still good.
