Posts

XChange of Ideas – Trends with Benefits

/in ,

XChange Events

This XChange of Ideas shares trends that can boost your business’ productivity.

We recently spent three packed days at the XChange 2022 Conference. While we attend to improve our service offerings and business, many of the insights will benefit your business as well.

1 Industry Consolidation Awareness 

As with most maturing, dynamic industries, consolidation of vendors is not unusual in technology. Bringing together complimentary technologies and solutions can create synergy and economies of scale.  Currently, we are seeing something a bit different.  Companies that provide the systems we use to run our business are acquiring products and services that we offer to our customers.  By offering solutions we sell, and the solutions we use, our vendors are hoping to provide us with better integration and efficiencies.

The risk, however, is that service providers will focus, or limit, their options to match the “single vendor” efficiency. While you, as the customer, may benefit from the efficiency, these benefits will be fleeting if the solutions do not meet your needs.

We, at Cumulus Global, will continue to offer multiple solutions for nearly all of the services we offer. We commit to this strategy because efficient mediocrity serves nobody well.

2 VDI is Better than O.K.

Acceptance and use of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and remote desktop services is on the rise. Beyond an interim solution, VDI services prove to offer many businesses long term value. We see several reasons for considering a move to VDI, including:

  • Support for hybrid work environments. With employees working in office and remote, a VDI environment provides a single computing environment for your entire business.  Accessing files and applications is the same, regardless of location and end user device.
  • Strategic Savings. VDI services extend the useful life of your existing laptops and desktops.  Since VDI clients are not processing data locally, the demand on processors, memory, and disk space are minimal.  Aging equipment can remain in service without impacting performance.
  • Improved Security.  VDI services run in secure, professionally run data centers. We use Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform for VDI services. VDI provides private, secure networks, with multiple access options to meet your business needs.
  • Business Continuity and Resiliency. The faster you can recover from a disaster or technology failure, the better your business will survive and grow. VDI services remove most of the risks from local disasters and system failures.  As you can access your services from anywhere you are Internet-connected, and from most any end user device, teams can easily relocate and work around localized disruptions.

As disruption of technology supply chains continues, VDI allows you to upgrade your environment without investing in new desktop and laptop devices. You can move forward with your business without worrying about system availability.

To explore if VDI services can help your business, contact us about our security assessments, or schedule an intro call with one of our Cloud Advisors.

The QuickBooks Hosting Challenge

/in

QuickbooksQuickBooks is the leading accounting package for small business. And yet, many businesses cannot run QuickBooks Online, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version. Whether the online versions lack industry-specific features you need, or you have integrated third party tools/add-ons, staying with an on-premise version of QuickBooks remains the best solution for your business.

As you move to the cloud, hosting your QuickBooks Pro, Premier, or Enterprise system makes sense. You keep the version of QuickBooks you need and improve accessibility, reliability, security, and resiliency from system failures and disasters.

In general, we find two levels of common QuickBooks hosting options. Looking at these services more closely, we find these services often fail to meet basic needs without expensive upgrades.  Fortunately, we have a third option designed to deliver the business value you need and want.

Basic

Basic QuickBooks hosting services run between $27 and $30 per user per month, with you purchasing and providing the QuickBooks license key. These services start with 1 GB of storage with fees for added storage that add-up quickly. Adding storage you need for reports, exports, etc., can easily increase the cost to the $75-$90 per user per month range. More importantly, your instance of QuickBooks is running on shared servers and on a shared network. As such, you have greater risk for performance issues, security breaches, and outages. In this type of multi-tenant environment, the actions of other can impact your business. These services offer backup, usually once per day with a fixed retention period of 7, 14, 30, or 90 days, depending on the service.

Better

The better QuickBooks hosting services cost between $49 and $60 per user per month, with you purchasing and providing the QuickBooks license key.  These services also start with 1 GB of storage with fees that add up when you need more space. Typical fees quickly creep up to the $95 to $120 per user per month range.  The main difference is that these services generally run your version of QuickBooks on a dedicated server, but still run on a shared network. While this does reduce the chance of interference from other tenants, this model still has your service running in the same security envelope as other companies. You still have a risk. Like the basic services, you have a once per day backup with a fixed retention period that varies with each service provider.

Best

The best solution for hosting QuickBooks will use your license of QuickBooks in the following environment:

  • Dedicated server
  • Private network
  • A usable amount of storage included (100 GB or more)
  • Flexible backup schedules and retention plans
  • Easy access from desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones
  • Access to Excel (MS Office) in the hosted environment

We this type of setup, you are more secure, will have better performance, and greater reliability.

The good news is that we can build you this type of environment at a cost comparable to other services, and we can integrate your QuickBooks environment with your Office 365 or G Suite service.

If you are interested in learning more about QuickBooks hosting options, please contact us for a free Cloud Advisor session.

 

“Deja Vu?” or “Have We Learned Our Lesson?”

/in ,
Hurricane Matthew as of 2pm on Oct 4th

Hurricane Matthew as of 2pm on Oct 4th

As of this blog post, Hurricane Matthew is churning through the western Caribbean with a projected path eerily similar to Superstorm Sandy in 2012. In its wake, Sandy left a path of destruction up the East Coast and deep into New England with many families and businesses still in the process of rebuilding. Small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) up and down the eastern seacoast were crippled by flooding, loss of infrastructure, and extended Internet and power outages; many were unable to recover.

Could this be a devastating Deja Vu, or did we learn our lesson?

Have you ensured that your information services and data will survive the next storm? Do you know how quickly your business can recover if (more like when) the next storm hits?

Path of Superstorm Sandy in 2012

Path of Hurricane Sandy in 2012

These questions feel more pressing as our next potential big storm churns towards Florida.

Good. Better. Best.

Your “Good” strategy is Backup. Ensure that you back up all of your critical data. Backups should be off site to a service that lets you restore to new systems quickly and efficiently.

Your “Better” strategy is Recovery. In addition to backups, ensure you have the ability to recovery quickly to new systems or to a temporary data center. When your  Return to Operations (RTO) time lets you continue running your business without significant impact to you or your customers, your recovery plan is sound.

Your “Best” strategy is Resilience. Your business is resilient when you can continue running your business with minimal disruption and with little or no inconvenience to your customers, regardless of the weather outside. By placing key applications and services in the cloud, your business can continue to run whether or not your office is open. With Internet access and a browser, your team can connect and work. And while you still may have some aspects of your IT running on premise, a solid cloud strategy keeps critical systems available and operating.

Resiliency Roadmap

For most SMBs, you should consider having the following services hosted or in the cloud. Depending on your applications and needs, you can use Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions or host your applications on cloud/hosted servers with virtual/remote desktops.

  • Communications
    • Email / Calendar / Contacts
    • Telephony — cloud/hosted Voice over IP (VoIP)
    • Messaging / Voice & Video Conferencing
  • Collaboration
    • File Storage & Sharing
    • Productivity Tools (document, spreadsheet, presentation editors)
  • Key Business Apps
    • Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
    • Account / Finance
    • Service / Support
    • Others …

Creating a Resilient business requires strategic thinking, advanced planning, and solid execution. This is especially true when you have integrated applications and systems that you cannot change in isolation. At a high level, the roadmap is:

  1. Identify the applications and services
  2. Prioritize all applications and services based on the impact in the event of a service outage. Look outward and inward, remembering to consider customer impact.
  3. Starting with your highest priority applications and systems, evaluate if your level or protection: Backup, Recovery, or Resilient protection.
  4. Identify and implement solutions that take you from Backup to Recovery, from Recovery to Resilience, or from Backup all the way to Resilience.
  5. Repeat as you move through your prioritized list.

While you may not have time to make your business Resilient before Hurricane Matthew works its way up the coast, you have options to improve your backups and your ability to recover that can be implemented within hours rather than days and weeks. Think about the value of keeping your business running and ensuring its survival. Act now.

Contact us immediately if you want assistance with your backup, recovery, or resiliency services.