SubscribeHosted services reduce the risk to your business
by Ben SummersBefore I started OneIS with Jennifer, I worked as a freelance IT consultant to small businesses. I had some really good clients who did lots of interesting things, and were kind enough to recommend me to others.
Every now and again, I got phone calls which started “I’ve been told I should talk to you, I’ve lost all my files.” It’s good to get clients by word of mouth, but when the introduction is in response to a disaster it does make things more, shall we say, interesting.
Fortunately in every case I managed to get the important files back, but it’s a nerve wracking time for that new client who’s wondering if their business will survive.
What if your office burnt down and you lost everything?
Hopefully this is a fairly unlikely scenario. But what would happen if there was a disaster which destroyed your office and everything in it?
Your insurance will replace your computers, stock and other equipment. But they can’t do anything about your data; your emails, your files, the history of the work you’ve done in the past. Would your business be able to keep going?
Ah, you say, but I’ll restore from backups. (You do have backups, don’t you?)
You’d be surprised how many small businesses keep their backups next to the computer they’re backing up. While this protects against failures of this computer, it doesn’t protect against your office burning down.
And have you checked that your backups work? Is everything essential being backed up? Can you actually restore it to a new computer and keep on working?
You’d be right if you were thinking this is a lot of work which you’ve got to do on a regular basis, however busy you are. But planning for a disaster, and testing that your plan works, is essential for managing this severe risk to to your business.
No small organisation purposefully puts themselves at risk. The reason they slip into doing so is because their business has nothing to do with running IT systems. They have to use IT to be able to work efficiently, but it’s just a utility in the background. So they concentrate on the things which make them money — which is perfectly understandable.
Unfortunately, computers aren’t something you can assume will always work. In a way, they’re like cars. It’s not too difficult to drive a car, but if you get something wrong or it breaks, the results can be disastrous. Fortunately, an IT disaster is rarely life-threatening to you, but may be to your business.
So what would you do if your office burnt down? If you use hosted services, the answer you’d give is “find an internet connection and resume work.”
Hosted services
This is why I designed OneIS as a hosted service. You use it through your web browser, and all your data lives on our servers in a carefully monitored data centre. We do all the IT infrastructure work for you, all you have to do is use it.
Because running IT systems is our business, we spend lots of time setting everything up well and are continually monitoring for potential problems. Our systems are far more resilient than anything a small organisation would economically be able to provide themselves. How many small companies do you know who:
- use high quality servers where every part of the server is redundant, so a failure can’t bring the system down
- keep their servers in a high security data centre
- do automatic online backups to another location
- have spare servers standing by in case the worst happens
- and have a team of people looking after all this equipment, proactively monitoring it?
This is just the start of what we do to look after our client’s data, and all good hosted services take similar measures. These would be extreme for a small company, but essential when you’re looking after lots of organisation’s data.
So, I’m a big fan of hosted systems. You concentrate on what makes your business unique and profitable, and the provider concentrates on keeping you running. You can rest easy, knowing an expert is dedicated to the task of making your IT work.
You’re probably using a hosted service already
Email is a classic example of a hosted service. For most small organisations, the company who provides your internet connection or hosts your web site will also handle your email.
They have servers which accept email from the rest of the world, and store it for you until you ask for it. You then use an application on your computer, or web mail, to access your email when you need it.
This works well. Running a reliable email service is not trivial, and it works best when one dedicated company looks after it for many clients. Why would you do it yourself?
What if my internet connection isn’t working?
The Internet has made hosted services possible, and access to the Internet has improved greatly in the last few years. It’s cheap, reliable, and easy to set up and use. And you can get a connection in any city on the earth, and even on your mobile phone.
Hosted services may seem to depend on your internet connection working, but in fact, they just depend on you having access to any internet connection. If your broadband goes down, use your mobile or pop out to the local cafe with wifi. Having a backup internet connection is cheap and easy — and you should probably have one anyway as the internet is so important to a modern organisation.
Besides, good hosted applications like OneIS have partial offline access. You can still use your contacts and work on your documents, even without an internet connection. This is also handy for when you’re on the train.
But it’s not in my office!
Occasionally I talk to people who worry because their data isn’t in their office where they can see it and have control over it.
Obviously, hosted services take security really seriously, especially those like OneIS, who deal with company’s information. Again, a small organisation without a full-time IT team is hardly likely to take the same stringent data security measures as a company dedicated to providing a hosted service.
The biggest risk to your data is losing it though equipment failure. If it’s not in your office, that’s a good thing because the experts are taking great care over it, keeping it secure and always available.
Almost everything can be hosted
You can get just about anything as a hosted service, from email to word processors to file sharing to online backups to, of course, information management.
Unless IT is a core part of your business, and particularly if you don’t have your own IT staff, you should seriously consider hosted services for as much of your IT infrastructure as possible. Letting someone else look after your information reduces your risk.
I’m sure you’ve never considered generating your own electricity. But for a few decades, electricity was generated by those who used it, right next to their factories. Many held out long after utility companies offered to generate it for them, but eventually everyone used the grid. It was far more reliable and cheaper to get someone else to generate it for you.
When IT is an infrastructure service which has to work, why would you do it yourself when someone else can do it better?
Five step plan for reducing your risk
Your aim is to make your computers disposable. If you lost the computer you’re using right now, you need to be able to get a new one and start working immediately.
- Look at all the ways you use your computer through your working week, and see where the data is stored.
- If the data is stored on your computer, then try to find a hosted service.
- Be careful with email; you often copy emails from your service provider to your computer, then delete it from their servers. Consider using a provider like a hosted Microsoft Exchange service (if you use Outlook) or Google Apps (for the rest of us). Tip: if you look in your account settings and see you’re using ‘POP’, then your email is on your computer and at risk.
- If you have a server, look at the files stored on it. Perhaps it could be managed with a hosted service like OneIS?
- Finally, for all the data which can’t be moved to a hosted service, use an on-line backup system which backs up that final bit of data to an off-site store whenever you’re connected to the internet.
And, as a bonus, if it’s easy to set up a new computer for you, it’s easy to set up a computer for a new colleague.
OneIS can help reduce your risk
You deal with lots of information in your everyday work. From documents, to contact information, to plans, and procedures. OneIS is a hosted service which can look after all of a small organisation’s information, not only making you more efficient in working with your colleagues, but making a big step forward in reducing the risks facing your organisation.