by Felicien | Sep 4, 2019 | Education
Are You Ready for the Cloud?
With a clear, comprehensive implementation plan, you can minimize downtime and disruptions while you move your data and applications to the cloud.
Let’s walk through the 5 W’s + How.
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?
No, this isn’t an intro to journalism course. Instead, we’ll use this formula to break down your options for finding the best IT outsourcing firm to help you move your health care practice to the cloud.
What Should You Be Looking For?
Clouds are private, public or a hybrid of the two. These labels can be confusing. Public clouds aren’t open to the public and private ones serve as remote data centers for a single health care provider.
To decide the best cloud for your organization, determine what you’re actually looking for. Choose from a service that supplies platform, infrastructure or software as a service — PaaS, IaaS or SaaS. Relevant considerations include company size, HIPAA impact and what you wish to accomplish.
Who Is the Best Cloud Provider?
Healthcare IT News identifies seven top providers:
Amazon Web Services, who developed these services first, has aggressive pricing and releases new features regularly. Their main service is IaaS.
CDW Cloud Solutions, familiar to many healthcare organization, offers a variety of services, such as migration planning and project support.
IBM Cloud, ClearDATA, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and VMWare receive honorable mention.
It’s best to look into several services to determine the best one for your IT needs.
When Is it Time to Switch to the Cloud?
Most companies have some kind of cloud-based functionality already. For those still deciding whether to switch, the following questions can help clarify your thoughts.
Who can help us with the migration plan?
Is the management team stable?
What’s the strategy driving the move?
Are local providers reliable?
Is it in the budget?
Will we net a positive return on our investment?
These questions get right to the heart of the matter and help you find out if your team is ready, able and willing to make the switch.
Where Should the Data Centers Be Located?
The physical location doesn’t matter that much. It’s more important to replicate data and applications in distinct regions for redundancy and to ensure access to your data. Where you locate or have your IT consultants locate your backups is determined by the technology and configurations that work best with your systems. In fact, if you’re paying for around-the-clock monitoring, location becomes irrelevant.
Why Are You Thinking About Moving to the Cloud?
This question is a bit outmoded. A better question would be, “Why wouldn’t you move to the cloud?” That’s a question most companies have or are asking themselves right now. Cloud systems scale easily and they’re cheaper than the cost of maintaining your own local data centers. In the cloud, critical processes, such as data replication or disaster recovery are more straightforward.
Cloud services also offer a pay-as-you-go model that fits the budget of more practices and startups. While data security used to be considered a risk on the cloud, new technology has helped ensure the security of your systems and client data.
How Can You Get There?
Vet out an experienced healthcare IT provider that’s handled multiple cloud implementations and integrations. Reputable providers should be able to share their own cloud models, provide references, and ensure that you start and end with a reasonable budget.
Scalability is key in the cloud. It’s one of the major benefits, so make sure your organization is in a position to leverage it. With the right cloud set up, scaling up your user base should be easy and hassle-free. The documentation your IT consulting provides should include detailed plans regarding the tools and features needed for HITECH and HIPAA requirements. With a clear, comprehensive implementation plan, you can minimize downtime and disruptions while you move your data and applications to the cloud.
by Felicien | Aug 30, 2019 | Education
To make the most out of what we hope will be a gorgeous long weekend, we will be closing our office for the day on Monday, September 2nd.
And as always, we’ll have technicians on call for all of our managed IT services clients, and you’ll be able to reach us by calling our office if any emergency technical issues arise.
by Felicien | Aug 29, 2019 | Education
According to FEMA, 40% of businesses hit with a disaster never recover, and this rate more than doubles for those without a business continuity plan. While the two are linked, a business continuity plan shouldn’t be confused with disaster recovery. You might have a great plan for getting things up and running after an event but still fail to plan for continuity of time-sensitive business functions. And that’s why developing a real continuity plan is so important.
What Is a Business Continuity Plan?
A Business Continuity Plan is an essential component of risk management. The BCP specifically addresses the risk associated with an unanticipated lack of ability to continue business operations. The reasons for this lack could be many:
Natural disaster
Terrorist attack
Major power outage
Technology failure
Loss of customer data
Someone hijacking customer data and holding it for ransom
Even a couple hours of lost operations can have multiple consequences. A BCP mitigates them by identifying and assessing risks before developing, testing, implementing and measuring the effectiveness of strategies that keep your business running with the least downtime possible.
Some of these strategies may include:
Reducing risk to customer data through firewalls, backups, employee education, security protocols, etc.
Enhancing your servers and telecom infrastructure
Enhancing data recovery
Re-routing calls/contact
Developing a work from home program
Setting up a temporary “base” when your building isn’t accessible
The strategies vary as much as the companies that employ them. So before anyone begins developing a business continuity plan, it’s important to know what areas are impacted by the inability to continue operations. How much do they cost your company?
What is a Business Impact Analysis?
The Business Impact Analysis is the first critical step in developing a business continuity plan. In this phase, identify time-sensitive business operations. Additionally, consider related resources needed for employees to perform those functions.
An effective analysis not only identifies these elements. It employs data to prioritize business continuity efforts.
Continuity concerns may present themselves on a scale. At one end you have mere inconvenience. At the other is significant (and possibly irreparable) business harm. So it’s important that when developing a business impact analysis, you make the distinction.
Every department will naturally feel that they are the “most important”. But scrambling to prevent inconvenience will drain resources from impactful continuity challenges. Once again, data save the day. It helps us make the most impartial, data-driven decision.
When it comes to business impact analyses, there are no “cookie-cutter” solutions. That’s why this phase of planning is so important. It helps you develop the customized plan you need to mitigate risk effectively.
How to Develop a Customized Impact Analysis for Your Business
When developing an impact analysis, look at each department, team, and/or area of your business. As you do, consider these three areas. FEMA business impact analysis worksheet says that those elements are:
Timing/Duration of outage
Operational Impacts
Financial Impacts
So, for example, if Department A can’t continue operations for 30-60 minutes what happens? How does this impact the bottom line? What if that department/team were down for two hours? And so on. The ramifications will get progressively worse.
In some departments, financial impacts may be fairly easy to measure. But in others, you may need to think more broadly about the costs of downtime or lack of access. This will give you a truer picture.
Direct Financial Impact – lost sales, paying employees who can’t work, overtime to catch up, increased customer returns, etc.
Customer Relationship Impact – lost client contracts, bad customer reviews, diminished social sharing, bad public relations, cost of PR damage control
Vendor Relationship Impact – lost vendor contracts, increased vendor costs, strained partnerships, lost trust, trouble building new partnerships
Employee Relationship Impact – lost faith in the company, morale issues from too much overtime, retention problems, increased recruiting costs
Regulatory Impact – This one may vary by industry as well as department. For example, in healthcare, failure to comply with HIPAA may result in fines and legal troubles. If you process payments, inability to meet PCI regulations could result in loss of contracts with major credit card companies. Any company that’s managing customers data ( e.i., every company) should have some awareness of SOC2 compliance and the impacts of not properly securing customer data to maintain business functions. In education, lack of continuity would not only impact FERPA compliance.
Don’t “assume” these costs. In most cases, you’ll have data to clearly quantify their impact. Once you’ve considered the true impacts of lack of continuity in each area, you’re ready to prioritize and develop your business continuity plan.
by Felicien | Aug 29, 2019 | Education
Ten questions to ask while considering outsourcing your IT services to a provider.
Many companies are outsourcing their IT functions due to convenience and budgetary constraints. Small- and medium-size businesses can focus their hiring of staff for their core business, and hire an IT consultant for their expertise and efficiency. However, even with the growth in IT consulting, there are several things you should consider before signing a contract.
It easy to fall prey to assumptions when interviewing consultants to outsource IT services. Packaged services don’t always include additional IT support, management, maintenance and security needed for your business’ network. When agreeing to a contract, look carefully to make sure it contains everything you need. Here are some questions for you to ask when interviewing a new consultant.
1. How do you support security compliance?
Often IT providers support security compliance through their package bundles which include an array of features and components. On this list of features you should see firewall configuration, vulnerability patching, incident response, intrusion detection systems (IDS), demilitarized zones (DMZs), intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and more. These features should be included by default to protect your data and hardware.
Dependent on your industry and client list, you should have a good idea of the level of security necessary for your network to ensure compliance and proper security documentation. Discuss this with any providers you interview to match the level of security needed to protect your business.
2. How do you manage service integration?
In order to stay competitive, your company needs to fine-tune service integration. Standard Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) capabilities require integration and automation from your IT service provider to minimize errors and provide secure and effective on-demand service delivery.
3. How do you support incremental outsourcing?
In order to reduce risks associated with outsourcing, you can divide the requirements you need into manageable projects. If you provide a specific set of deliverables to your service provider to work with in a trial setting, you can better assess their completion. You have the option of having the work done on your premises or remotely to better prepare for completely outsourcing managed services.
4. Do you provide a service-level agreement (SLA)?
The service-level agreement (SLA) is one of the most important factors in outsourcing IT services. This agreement is where the service provider details the list of support actions they will provide including end-to-end program management and deliverables to your company.
The agreement should lay out how the provider will take on the project from your company, deploy a small remote or on-site team to coordinate and complete the work. Included in the agreement are delivery dates, the effectiveness of the work, surveys to ensuring the quality of service, and timeframes for the availability of services and service request response times.
5. How flexible is the SLA?
Can the provider grow and change as your business does? Changes within your company should be reflected by the services provided for your IT needs. As you grow, your company will hire more people, take on new projects, add new departments and functions, and have a need for scalable IT infrastructure from your IT provider. In fact, your service provider should have expertise in their field that includes the knowledge and experience to custom-fit a scalable infrastructure that you need for your company.
6. What kind of experience do you have?
If you look at managed service providers by price alone, you may find that you don’t get the expertise you need. It’s better to outsource your IT services needs to an expert that’s completed hundreds of projects successfully. Extract the most value from an experienced partner to gain peace of mind over the quality of work completed. Included in the experience is the latest training and tools available to best protect your company’s data.
7. How do you handle IT strategy vs. emergency support?
If your company has a strategic IT strategy, you need a service provider that can act as a partner in this process. Your service provider should be the expert resource to assist in your strategy. If all they do is take orders and offer emergency service, they are not the right fit for your company.
8. Who will govern our IT services?
Your SLA should include an understanding about who will govern and take responsibility for your IT services. By including a foundational governance framework, you will set the tone for future accountability and start with a shared understanding for your team and your provider’s team. This framework determines which entity makes specific decisions to support organizational principles.
9. What is your reporting process?
Formal reporting should be listed in your SLA and include the standard set of reports provided and a timeline for delivery of those reports from the provider. The frequency and scope of the formal reports between the provider and in-house manager should take place according to the schedule. However, many providers offer informal reports as work is completed.
10. How will you adopt new configuration management?
Changes are part and parcel of a business, making managing those changes routine for your IT service provider. For routine changes, your SLA should cover implementation, but if you have a large project then you should discuss management with your provider before implementation. You can initiate a change request to the provider to allow them to complete an analysis of how to proceed. Once the provider has responded with a schedule and any questions they have, you can move forward on the project together. With a system in place to accomplish new projects, it’s easy to maintain proper tracking and logging of work completed.
by Felicien | Aug 28, 2019 | Education
Get Your Beauty Sleep With Nightlight In Windows 10
You may have been using Windows 10 for some time now, but it’s likely that you haven’t mastered all of its features just yet.
If you, like so many others, use your computer late at night, before (or even in) bed, then you may have found that it throws off your sleep cycle. Despite being tired when you got into bed, after staring at the backlit screen for a few hours, you’re not as tired anymore.
This has to do with melatonin – a chemical produced by your body when your eyes see that it’s dark and determine its time for sleep. Looking at a bright screen throws off this natural process, and the lack of melatonin makes it harder to get to sleep.
Did you know you can reduce this effect with Nightlight?
Nightlight is a feature that lowers the brightness of the screen and changes the color spectrum in order to limit the interruption to melatonin production. To turn it on, find it under Settings, and set a schedule for it to follow based on your preferences for late-night computing.
We hope you enjoyed our series on Windows 10…searching for a new IT company? Give us a call at {phone} or send us an email to {email}.
