Big Picture Thinking

With technology it's important to always view the forest, not just the trees. Equally as important is to bear in mind that the trees make up the forest.

Looking at problems and solutions from multiple angles yield options not normally viewable from a single angle. It also comes down to ensuring that from the larger perspective, clients feel both knowledgeable and in control of their destiny.

In proposing solutions, we ensure that all costs for technology solutions proposed help the client make better informed decisions and in understanding the financial impact of a solution over its useful life.

Customers come first as they are the reason we exist.

The corporate strategic vision rules supreme in strategic and spending decisions.

Internal IT customers matter as they are both your biggest critics and biggest fans of your internal system.

Lease major hardware and when returning, remember to destructive format any returned hardware.

Buy and upgrade software to benefit from site or volume licenses where possible.

Upgrade software for a good reason not just because it's the latest. The pain must be worth the gain. Test thoroughly with all business applications and operating systems before deployment.

Evaluate new technologies not just based on conventional ROI, but for functional capabilities that may give your company a competitive advantage for some specified period of time.

Create a 'proof of concept' for anything costly before going large scale. This will prevent the pitfalls and failures that may hurt the business and your reputation.

The 15% Rule. A one-time fifteen percent investment in infrastructure best practice design additions will pay dividends in uptime, peace of mind, and reduced cost of ownership through future-proofing.

The 80/20 rule. Infrastructure implementations are largely a planning effort, which is the 80%. Procurement and physical implementation, the other 20%, should only take place after a thorough planning and contingency exercise has been completed and all participants are in agreement.

When relocating a business, only consider buildings with fiber. If you don't need today, you will soon. It's also much easier to upgrade Internet speed and voice facilities if fiber is in place.

Consider Cloud hosting both web sites and email as they will likely remain available even during local disasters, sustained electrical outages or internal system failures. In doing so, select a reputable provider.

You may want to host your offsite services in a different seismic area or too close to your main site as it may defeat the purpose of co-location. In the end, it's all about not keeping too many eggs in the same basket.

Maintain solid Anti-Virus and Intrusion Prevention strategies by having the proper software and systems, and limiting "holes" in your firewall to absolute minimums. A check from an outside intrusive testing company may also point out a few shortcomings.

Commit to longest comfortable term software and hardware support contracts in return for discounts that make financial sense. This will yield the greatest possible discounts. For leases, make hardware support contracts co-terminate with lease term.

Never commit to longer than a 3-year contract with any telecom carrier as it may lock you into to higher than market rates.

Be at least two resources deep in all areas of mission-critical expertise, including outside expertise. Otherwise , if one person is unavailable and a business-critical system fails, you may be left holding the ball.

Maintain a Disaster Recovery plan to ensure data and systems are protected to the maximum extent possible

Date all documents. This ensures you always know which one is the current one and prevents folks from being on different pages.