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Adapt And Survive
By Mark Beecroft, Director of Hotech Ltd
Information Technology continues to change at a rapid pace, with new hardware and software emerging all the time. In today's competitive market, you have to adapt to survive - businesses need to be agile to maintain their competitive edge, making sure their IT systems are able to support the needs of the business quickly and efficiently.
• Is technology in your business evolving to keep up to date, or are you 'staying put for now' and wondering how long things will keep working?
Change Management
By being proactive you can manage changes to your IT infrastructure to minimise any disruption. In many organizations, a large proportion of service interruptions are caused by change-related incidents. If change is not correctly managed, there may be an impact on the profitability of the business. Businesses that can manage smooth changes to their IT systems as a continuous process, rather than making numerous updates at one time, are less likely to suffer disruption.
• Do you have anybody in your business who oversees your IT strategy, or are decisions made in response to problems as they arise?
Hardware
Keeping your hardware up to date can be time-consuming and fraught with difficulty should incompatibilities arise at a later stage. However, small changes such as memory upgrades can help significantly, and may be much better value for money and easier to implement than replacing a whole system.
• Do you have any PCs that run slowly or are unreliable, and would you welcome some advice on how to upgrade them?
Software
At this time there are a number of major software upgrades available, in particular from Microsoft who within the last few months have released new versions of both Windows and Office. Operating systems and Office programs are typically only changed every 5 to 7 years, so these are major changes, especially if you are considering both at the same time.
• Are you thinking of changing to Windows 7, or upgrading to Office 2010, and if so do you know what effect these changes might have on your day-to-day operations?
Email
Most users download email from their provider's mailserver onto a PC and use software such as Microsoft Outlook to read it and control how it is stored. However new ‘cloud-based' mail systems, offering more efficient, flexible, and safe handling of mail on a remote server, are now mature enough to be considered as an alternative.
• Would you like to change to a more effective email system, but are unsure how to go about this?
Backups
Everybody knows that they should back up all their data on a regular basis, but not all businesses observe best practice when it comes to keeping offsite copies, or testing backups to be sure that they would be usable in the event of an emergency. Backup procedures need to be watertight, so you can be certain you can recover from a complete loss of your main server or PC with minimal impact on your business. New technologies such as online backup are now becoming established as credible and cost-effective alternatives to traditional backup methods.
• Would you like to have your backup strategy checked and the contents of a backup verified?
Hotech - Getting IT Working
If you have answered 'Yes' to any of the above, then Hotech can help. We offer an initial on-site meeting, at no cost and with no obligation, at which we can assess your requirements and make recommendations.
info@hotech.co.uk
020 8544 9321
78 Durham Road London SW20 0TL
After four years in hotel management in the early 1980s, Mark became immersed almost exclusively in hotel IT systems for over 20 years. He recently broke out into the wider world of IT to concentrate on developing business in South West London. Having now driven the equivalent of 20 times around the world, his ultimate ambition is to be able to reach all his customers on foot!
« Back to News | Published: 29/06/10