Small and Medium Business

We run into the statement “I’ve got a guy…” a lot.* (gals, see note below)    The corollary is “I am using someone I’ve used for a long time…”.  Both of these are understandable.  We are in an service area that is very customer intimacy centric.  Customers have to trust us even if they really don’t know what we do or how to really measure success.   So here is what I tell my sales staff when they run into that question.

1.  So you have someone you trust, that’s great. They are there when you need them night or day, quickly to fix things?

2.  Can I ask you a question?   How often are they the hero?  It shouldn’t be that often

3.  If they have to be the hero more than twice a year or so might it make sense to at least have a second opinion on your network architecture?  It may be just right but you may be paying for heroics that are not really necessary.

* Sorry gal’s I’m just the messenger here and I’ve never actually heard “I’ve got a gal…” although we’ve hired some pretty terrific network engineers who happened to be women.

We had the wife of an important employee of an important client call us today and let the receptionist know that this was an emergency.  It was mid day Friday and they were leaving for 2 weeks vacation in the morning and the laptop they would use to connect to the company Citrix was set up with two profiles, the wife’s and the husbands.  The husbands profile would not connect to the internet ever since he installed a wireless headset.  Our engineers were very stressed about how to handle this because the persons house was a good 40 miles from the office and being this was a new client we were not sure if they expected to pay for us to go there and fix a private computer in a persons house.  The wife had said it was an “emergency” so we spent some time finding the decision maker at our client and the answer was, if he wants it fixed he will be responsible for the trip or for bringing it to us.   But it was an Emergency right?  Of course they would want us to come up.  Of course they did not.  What the wife had really meant was it was an “urgency” because they were leaving the next day.  Once we said that he would have to bring it down in order to get it fixed the work around was clearly the better option for them.  The work around was simply to use “her profile” on the laptop and he could get on the company Citrix.  Easy work around, no harm no foul and no need for 40 mile one way trip on the spur of the moment.

Some people might scoff at this as “oh sure the client wanted us to come to Cameron Park but it wasn’t important enough for THEM to actually make that trip”.  I say the real answer is communication.  The customer was sharing the need to have an answer quickly if a reasonable answer was to be found.  Our helpful guys heard this as “gotta have it fast” and translated “it” into fixed and “fast” into all costs, which came out to “Got to have it fast at all costs”.  The wife/customer was not out of bounds agreeing to allow our guys to come to make the drive.  In her  mind if that’s what the expert said was the right thing to do then that’s what they are paid to do is make those kinds of decisions, they are the expert.  But once the decision was made to toss that effort back to the customer, the customer correctly made the decision that the trip wasn’t worth it.  Problem solved in the best way possible given the circumstances.

The greatest impediment to communication is the illusion that it is actually happening.  Make sure when you hear important or urgent that you don’t decide to hear important AND urgent.  It’s the easiest thing to do but it’s also the easiest thing to validate.  Make sure your client understands what you are hearing so they have an opportunity to confirm it.

What is the effective lifespan of the computers in a business?  How do I know when I should replace one?

While there are no hard and fast ways to know how often you’ll have to replace computers, there are some guidelines that should make it easier to feel good about the decision when someone recommends a new machine.  Some of the factors to consider are how many people depend on the equipment for their productivity.  Servers are a particular concern because many, if not all of the computer users in your organization depend on the services provided by the server.  A workstation used by a book keeper is terribly important since the book keepers job is so clearly dependent on the computerized accounting system.   Laptops are vulnerable to repair more often than workstations because of their mobility.  Laptops also suffer from technical obsolescence more quickly than workstations as vendors become better at putting more power into smaller, lighter space. This makes it more valuable more quickly to invest in the newer laptop for the new features.
So what are the guidelines we have seen over the years?

1. Servers; 5 years

Servers are utilized by everyone in the company who are dependent upon computer services.  This frequently includes employees who never even use the computer. Payroll for instance, is typically dependent on services that stop if the servers do not function.  Most computer manufactures will call out 5 years as the “end of life” of server hardware and make it prohibitively expensive or possibly impossible to renew the warranty after that time.   Technology changes over a 5 year period frequently are such, that a new hardware refresh due to age, can also provide high levels of productivity improvement.  We recommend beginning to engineer the next 5 year solution starting 4 years after your last refresh.  You should recognize that for those companies using several servers the 5 year cycle may or may not be synchronized.

Desktop Computers; 5+ years

Desktop computers are, in many cases, made of a subset of the same parts as servers.  These parts, just like servers, tend to wear starting in the 5th year.  The difference here is that you can make a decision based on the cost of downtime that a particular computer-user can stand. The bookkeeper needs a reliable machine; unless of course you can send them home for a day or so anytime, even payroll, with limited detrimental results.  But many people who need a computer for their job often have a handful of things they can do while there computer is being replaced.  Our guideline for desktops is to expect them to last 5 years before you consider replacement, and then as long as it works after that, call it good.  You will likely get an average of 7 years, especially if you move the older machines downscale to the less dependent users.

Laptops; 3+ years

Laptops are mobile. Therefore, they take more of a beating than a stationary computer at a desk.  The laptop is typically an integral part of a user’s job as well or they wouldn’t need the mobility.  We recommend considering replacing your laptops anytime there is a new requirement and/or the laptop has a problem after 3 years.  We don’t believe you have to instantly throw it out at 3 years, many times particular laptops in particular jobs will last much longer, sometimes as long as 5 or 6 years.  But if anything happens requiring any real money to be invested in a laptop over 3 years old it is time to strongly consider replacement instead.

Printers; 7 to 10 years

The good news is that a good printer should last a very long time.  I have seen original HP Laserjet II printers still in service after 15 years.  If it’s working, keep it.

Seriously there is still a place for tape backup but it’s not in most small to medium business networks.  Here are the problems:

1.  It is not random access so it’s difficult to retrieve single files or folders.

2.  It is subject to degradation easily based on heat and moisture.

3.  The tapes are expensive and wear out.

4.  You must find the same tape drive to read tapes in the event of system loss (theft/fire).

5.  You must restore data separately from the operating system making restoring a complete system time consuming and error prone.

6.  When your technician finds out there is a failure that requires restoring from tape, ask them if there is fear in the pit of their stomach.  Truthful caring one’s will tell you they are nervous.

Tape was the only way we had of reasonably backing up systems till just a year or two ago.  But there are now very inexpensive disk storage devices on the market and great software to take advantage of disk as a backup medium.  These two things make tapes a VERY bad choice for new backup in nearly all cases.   Next installment on the blog….What about off-site backup?.

We hear that remark in various ways all the time.  From “I want a computer that just works” to “I want a network that just works” to “I want a mobile device that just works” and on and on.  It makes sense, all of these things are tools to get some other job done. It is the other job that is valuable.  The tool is only valuable because it enables that other job to be accomplished.  If the tool get’s in the way of the thing you are using it to do it is not helpful. 

Squaretree has turned that into an internal slogan.  We do not deliver servers, or server maintenance, or desktop support or router configuration or messaging expertise……we deliver systems that just work.  If we are not doing that directly then we are helping internal I.T. Staff to do that for their companies.  There are alot of benefits to thinking this way, not the least of which is engineers become focused on the solution no mater if it leads to the server, the routers and networking gear or the workstation and are equally proud to work on any of them since they are delivering the “just works” network.

So…the other day I said to my wife, “don’t bother me I’m trying to get done and my computer is fighting me all the way”.  And she said…..you guessed it…..”and you deliver what????”. 

So I had to start thinking about that.  One of the things that we all have to remember, like it or not, is the computer that “just works” is probably not the same computer with which you push the envelope of connectivity and usabilty constantly.  For instance the thing I was having trouble with was getting my second monitor to work.  Sounds easy.  But I have a high end laptop with a very specialized high resolution video card that delivers a very crisp high resolution display on my laptop.  It can easily attach to a high resolution second monitor.  But of course I don’t stop there I suspend the machine and connect it to another high resolution monitor that is different make, model and resolution than the first without letting it reboot or anything.   Oh and between times I’ve decided to use it without the second monitor at all, even though I had windows open on that second monitor.  And I expect it to keep up without a pause during all this perfectly while running Java graphic applications and Windows media player videos both embedded in web sites and stand alone……AND…..I have perhaps 5 web pages, 7 emails, outlook, calendar and 4 programs running all in different windows.  Oh and two web browser brands also.  You know it’s a wonder it keeps up over 99% of the time. 

We can deliver the network or the computer that just works. But much like other appliances you need to define exactly what it is you want it to Just Work on.  Then we can do it.  But if you want it to also be able to just work you also have to live with the fact that you can’t try to confuse it constantly.  If you want push the envelope you have to remember that it will likely take a bit more patience on occassion to make it Just Work.

Incidentally I got what I needed to do accomplished and only 5 minutes later than I was targeting which was hours and hours faster than if I had not had a computer at all.  So ultimately the tool really did “Just Work”

Continued from What is Managed Service really? Some history

From 2000 on I have been looking for ways to use the large systems management programs to make our engineering department and our network clients life better.  I kept trying to get our engineers to put a really large square peg in a pretty tiny round hole.  Products like Tivoli, HP Open View and Microsoft Systems Management Server were robust, full featured and mature products but designed and priced to meet the needs of multi-national corporations with thousands of P.C.s.  They could be scaled down to networks around a thousand and even to 500 to 700 PC networks but they broke down when working with multiple domains meaning multiple separate companies which are the networks we support. 

In 2005 I discovered several programs to address this problem that were finally at a level of maturity to be worth looking at.  The programs we looked at were N-Able, Level Platforms and ManageIT.  All had pretty good capabilities but N-Able added a business training aspect that would they claimed would take you from a reactive to a proactive mind set.  You might remember the program about a Law School where the opening was the professor saying he wasn’t going to teach them the law he was going to teach them to “think like lawyers”.  N-Able understood that it was not enough to simply add a  monitoring system.  The mindset of the engineering department had to change. 

I was tired of the fact that we could only react to problems after they showed up.  I was tired of EVERYTHING being an emergency.  I was tired of not being able to see in advance when a network was overloaded or when a disk drive was showing errors days before it actually went out and we had no reliable way to catch the problem.  I was tired of never being sure that a clients backup was actually going to restore since I had no control over the removal and storage of tapes.  In late 2005 we purchased the program and embarked on a path of change that was a far more costly and difficult path than I would have imagined.  During that time we replaced all our engineers and not just once.  We have had setbacks and successes, rousing accolades and a few more challenging moments.  But through it all I was absolutely resolute in the knowledge that the only way to change the way network support was done was to give the engineers the tools we had just discovered and then work hard to get them to see the vision of using the tools to look into the future and start making more things planned and less things reactions.

That was alot harder than I thought.  The imaturity of the business itself was fighting me, there was not a shared peer concensus on the best way to deal with networks.  Engineers were typically passionate about computers and learned by getting in and doing but lacked alot of discipline around the processes.  The best of them developed the discipline out of neccessity but they were all inventing thier own.  One of the most pervasive problems though was the desire to be a hero.  While it’s stressful and difficult to deal with the user who is frantically trying to get to a network resource it is immensely rewarding to fix the problem and literally have people call you superman or my hero.  It was hard to get some engineers to let that go. 

The managed systems software we have in place today allows us to work to two major goals.  1.  Every thing on your network that will result in a user symptom or risk will send an alert before or when it happens and we will know about it.  2.  Every alert we get is something we actually care about.

The more closely we can get to these two goals the more perfectly we can achieve a truely managed service and the more we can get away from everything is an emergency.

Next:  What a managed network looks like

The buzz word of the year is Managed Services and virtually everyone is on the bandwagon.  But what really is a managed services company?  How do you tell if your service provider is just using the word and perhaps “flat rating” your service but really isn’t Managing your network? 

Let me give you a little history of managed services first then attempt to answer that question.  I am writing specifically about companies who service small network systems.  Small networks are from 10 users to about 250 users and typically span from 1 to 6 offices.   The companies who have helped with these networks in the past have been hamstrung by the lack of tools to help with the problem.  The networks developed as simple systems, usually built by a self taught network amature turned pro.  Maintenance was break fix only, meaning when something broke, you called and they fixed it…hopefully.  As time went on the best of the support people developed companies with planned programs periodically coming on site to do a system review of log’s and user information looking for hints of issues before they became big problems. Squaretree developed an elaborate checklist to write down disk usage and processor usage, etc. and graph them over time in the hope of seeing issues.  The problem, of course, was that you only could see what you could see the day you were on site.  If something happened after you left you’d never know till the user called.  Also the only professional test of the backup system was on the visit, users on site needed to be very aware of the backup system.  This frequently resulted in days or more of missed backups.  Finally the system was prone to other human errors.  One of the errors was the dreaded “user list”.  Frequently the benefit of reviewing the server performance records was overcome by the urgency of a list of user desires that seemed more important work when the tech came to the office.  The tech, trying to be accommodating, would take care of the issues and not have time to get to the system work.  It was a constant battle to get customers to understand that they were only causing themselves problems down the road.

All this time the hardware and software vendors were adding new and better ways for the systems to signal problems as early as possible.  Simple Network Management Protocol had been developing since the early 90’s and was getting applied to PC’s and Windows Management Instrumentation was added to the operating system.  At first the systems that could watch these tools and turn all the data into usable information were complex to manage and geared to large networks.  Approximately 3 years ago systems started to mature that would allow companies like Squaretree that were managing many small domains to take advantage of the same features and benefits as the large companies.  The best of the systems are still very expensive, 10’s of thousands of dollars, but that cost can be mitigated over many clients.  It is this technology that started the Managed Services movement.  Companies differentiate based on the way they use the tools and the systems they wrap around them.

More in the next installment