Understanding March Madness and its impact on your company

It’s March again, and many hoops fans are once again in a frenzy – creating fantasy basketball drafts, watching streamed basketball games, and researching basketball trends, rumors, and other related information. That’s “March Madness” for you. Most of the activity of March Madness is internet based, with gambling and betting at an all-time high, especially as the tournament draws to a close with the Elite Eight Teams whittling down to the Final Four. Fans spend a lot of time watching streamed videos of games and gathering information on the tournament online, distracting them from their official duties and potentially wasting company bandwidth. How much does this impact your company? A lot, says the research. A 2008 Newsweek article reports that the March Madness phenomenon cost a total of $1.7B in lost productivity. And that’s not counting the high bandwidth consumed from all the video streams and the research activities. In more recent research findings reported by national outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the losses due to March Madness are expected to continue. “Those who insist there will be no impact are kidding themselves,” says John Challenger, CEO of the Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “It might be a slight drop in output, or it could be slow Internet connections as bandwidth is sapped by employees watching streaming feeds of the games,” he adds. If you’re concerned about your company’s bandwidth during this period and want to look for ways to better manage it, we’d be happy to discuss a possible roadmap. Sources: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/03/17/2048029/college-basketball.html http://www.newsweek.com/id/124404

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Three Ways Managed Services Can Reduce Your IT Costs

In today’s tough market environment, many small and medium businesses are turning to Managed Services. But is the up-front cost worth it? We say yes—and think you’ll agree when we explain why. With Managed Services, an IT consultant constantly manages your network, typically from afar. In other words, someone will prevent many IT problems—and fix those that do occur before they disrupt your operations. Despite this benefit, many companies still consider Managed Services an unnecessary expense because it typically involves a monthly or yearly fee. But there are many ways that such a model can actually lower your IT costs. Lower overhead. It can be expensive to hire and train IT staff. In fact, staffing is often the largest portion of a company’s IT budget. You can eliminate much of that expense with Managed Services, which provide you with high-quality IT staff at a fraction of the cost. Increased cost predictability. The cost of responding to an IT problem is usually an unplanned expense—and often a significant one. With Managed Services, you prevent problems, so you can better predict (and therefore manage) IT costs. A better business model. Additionally, Managed Services provide an efficient business model. There’s less IT down time, which means employees are less frustrated and customers are always served. That increases employee retention and helps you create long-term business relationships—which in turn can increase your revenue. Contact us today for more information about our Managed Services.

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Is Your Disaster Recovery Plan Up To Date?

Businesses are constantly changing. Is your disaster recovery plan changing, too? It should be. Every company can experience a business-altering event at any time:  floods, explosions, accidents, computer malfunctions—the list is endless. If you have a disaster recovery plan, you’re prepared to prevent such events from disrupting your normal operations—or at least you were at the time you created the plan. But how long ago was that? As your business has grown, it’s likely that your products and services, or at least the way you deliver them, has changed as well. For example, the increase in technology-based processes over the past few years has likely increased your reliance on the availability of systems and information for your business to function effectively. These changes might necessitate a change in your disaster recovery plan. As a result, we recommend a regular review of your plan. If you make changes, these change should be tested and new processes documented so all employees can be trained accordingly. Finally, keep in mind that reviewing your disaster recovery plan isn’t a one-time event. Because changes to your products and services, or the way you deliver them, are likely to continue, reviewing your disaster recovery plan should be a regular process. If you’d like a professional review of your disaster recovery plan (or if you don’t have one in place at all), contact us today. We can help save your systems and data from the unthinkable.

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