MCPc Blog

Summer Days, Drifting Away

Who can watch the summer carnival scenes in Grease and not recall memories of fun in the sun? Carnivals, church festivals and company picnics are great examples of people joining together to play cheesy games, eat tasty food and interact with their friends and family.

But where do the summer days go? It seems like only yesterday we were looking forward to kicking off our summer fun at MCPc by planning a Memorial Day cookout during lunch. Now, we’re up to our eyeballs in back-to-school commercials on TV and ads in the papers. Well, before we get too close to the first snowflakes of winter, let’s remember all the fun things we did at MCPc this year to celebrate the summer.

Holiday Cookouts

In addition to the aforementioned cookout on Memorial Day, we also had one to kick-off the July 4^th holiday weekend. As usual, we were blessed with volunteer grillers to cook our main course. This time, we initiated a whole new batch of them, and what a contrast they were — from Frank who arrived complete with apron, gloves and hand sanitizer; to Jason who was armed with seven pounds of freshly marinated asparagus; to Kevin who showed up looking like he just walked out of a J.Crew catalog.

It was a festival of burgers, hot dogs and the occasional veggie burger for the non-carnivores among us. Our lunchroom gradually became packed with associates sharing stories and enjoying some downtime together. It’s great to see people interacting outside of meetings or hurried conversations while refilling coffee mugs.

Ice Cream Social

Who could forget our annual Ice Cream Social where we put to test the sundae-making skills Genese taught us last year? First, you put the toppings in your bowl, then you add your favorite ice cream flavor, and then you add more toppings — that way when you get to the end of your feast, you haven’t run out of toppings yet. Brilliant!

Company Picnic

This past weekend, 120 associates and their families enjoyed our annual Company Picnic at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, despite the 90-degree heat and high humidity. I can’t explain it, but there is something fun about seeing your co-workers out of their usual business attire and sweating with them in the shade.

In addition, it doesn’t get any better than when the wife of a new associate comes up to you and says, “My husband’s former employer never invited spouses, let alone kids, to these events. Thank you so much for including us and putting on such a nice event.”  Yes!

Charity Car Wash

We also had another highly successful car wash to benefit the Providence House this summer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sunny and 90 degrees like last year — instead it we had torrential downpours during a portion of the event. However, despite the weather, associates got in the spirit of things and contributed to the great cause anyway. We raised 33% more than we did last year! MCPc associates never cease to amaze me with their generosity, even in difficult economic times like these.

Isn’t that symbolic of what people at great companies like MCPc do? They celebrate the sunny days and work even harder during the gloomier ones to make sure we still come out on top. 

Your Ideas?

How do your companies enjoy summer fun together? We’re always looking for new ideas.

 

Beth Stec is the Director of Corporate Communications and Human Resources at MCPc, and is responsible for the development and management of personnel programs and policies.  Connect with Beth on LinkedIn.

The Case for Email Archiving

Not too long ago, the terms “backup” and “archiving” were often used interchangeably. More recently, I have noticed a trend toward using the term backup to refer to the primary data replica and the term archive used to reference a long-term, secondary data replica. 

Advances in technology have also brought about a paradigm shift in the target media employed for the task of copying company data: Hard disk drives have largely replaced linear tape as the primary media of choice because of their (substantially) better performance. The principal reason for this is the equation of available time compared to the amount of data that needs to be backed up or archived. It is significantly faster to search a random-accessed disk drive for data versus a linear tape that must wind and rewind in order to reach the required data.

Data continues to grow exponentially for a variety of reasons but we are unable to add more hours to the day as a means of accommodating the growth. Consequently, we are compelled to discover more efficient and faster methods of saving our data. It is the use of hard disks as target media that has made modern email archiving solutions a practical reality.

What is Email Archiving?

Email archiving does not replace conventional email backups, through which email servers are backed up so that they may be restored to a previous point in time in the event of a disaster.

Email archiving differs from backup in that the archive created is indexed and searchable. The email archiving software application allows an administrator to search the index of the archive based upon various criteria, such as:

• Date
• Subject
• Sender or receiver address
• Message size
• Attached files
• Forwarding status
• Combinations of the above.

Archived data is removed from the main data-store, thus the size of the main data-store is kept from growing uncontrollably.  The email archival application maintains pointers to the relocated data so that it is still accessible, though a bit slower than if it were still in the main data-store, but usually not to a noticeable degree.

Why is Email Archiving Needed?

There are two major reasons for businesses to consider email archiving: legal compliance and data-store management.

Legal Compliance

An administrator may be asked by an attorney to conduct a search of archived email messages - commonly referred to as e-Discovery - and produce a report of the findings.  The attorney would typically provide direction to the administrator as to the content of interest. The administrator would rely upon the email archiving application search function to discover the required content and to produce the report. Certain organizations (e.g, healthcare, financial and educational) are required by law to be in compliance should they ever be required to produce email information.

A few of the more often discussed laws/acts are: the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) act of 1999, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). 

It is incumbent upon every organization to determine what their specific compliance requirements are and to take the appropriate required steps, or risk potential fines and other penalties. One need only search the web to find hundreds of stories of what can happen to companies that have been caught off guard.

Data-Store Management

The other major reason to consider an email archive solution is to gain control over the email data-store. Email archiving has become a necessity because end-users are not self-policing when it comes to managing the size of their own email message store. Email archive management software can use a variety of different methods to maintain control over data-store size, for example:

• End-users can be assigned quotas and receive automated warnings when size limits are approached.
• Large email attachments can be replaced with stub files that still allow functionality but relieve the main data-store of the burden of holding large file attachments.
• An administrator can set and impose a policy upon end users to effectively and automatically control the size of the email message data-stores.

In order to illustrate this point, let’s consider a “what-if?” scenario: Suppose there are two companies, each using the same email software. Company A has an email data-store over one terabyte in size and company B has an email data-store approximately 200 GB in size. If both email servers crashed and needed to be restored from bare metal, the difference in time to restore the server at company A versus company B would be significant.

Key Benefits of Email Archiving

For most organizations, email as a service has become a mission-critical application and that is why people are taking the time to ensure that their email servers are running as efficiently as possible. An email archiving application can assist in making certain that your email servers are running lean and mean by “cutting out the fat,” so to speak.

Your company may or may not need to be concerned with legal compliance issues, but everyone should strive to get control over the ever-growing size of their email message stores. Ultimately, the implementation of an email archive solution will help to conserve storage space, allow your email servers to run more efficiently and provide for the ability to search and find messages in an efficient manner.

How does your business manage its email?

 

Perry Szarka is the Datacenter Strategic Business Unit leader at MCPc. He works closely with clients to understand their business objectives and discover solutions to help them achieve their goals.

 

Image Credit:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3119/2313189596_a67b38baa6.jpg

Economical and Effective Redundancy Solutions

Many companies today rely heavily on Internet connections for data connections, Virtual Private Network (VPN) links or web access to critical sites. Operational processes are greatly affected if their circuit goes down or develops speed issues. At a minimum, this can cause wasted productivity. In extreme cases, it could result in lost revenue, lost clients or low customer satisfaction. 

Companies want to build redundancy in their circuit connections, however, tight budgets may not support the cost of two major internet connections. Even if costs were not an issue, true redundancy may not be achieved by simply having two different circuit providers due to the fact that most local connections are delivered over common paths into the building (the same entry points, same telephone pole and so on). In such a case, a storm or accident that takes out that access means both circuits are down and thereby defeats the redundancy initiative. Finally, bringing in two connections requires some fancy networking to allow inbound and outbound traffic to sync up seamlessly in the event of a failover scenario.

So what can be done to achieve redundancy without the high cost and inefficiency? Recent advances in telecom carrier solutions offer several options for small-to-medium-sized businesses.

Wireless Networks

Over the past few years, there have been significant improvements in wireless networks and the fact that carriers are constantly expanding coverage presents a clever, cost effective solution: Companies can have their primary connection (T-1, 10meg, etc.) and then purchase an inexpensive wireless connection at typically less than $100 per month. The wireless service is robust enough to be used as an emergency back-up, yet costs only a fraction of a typical primary circuit. 

Wireless provides another real benefit — no local loop! Therefore, a storm that takes out your local access typically will not affect the wireless link. Additionally, manufacturers such as Barracuda Networks and Sonicwall provide cost-effective appliances that will link two or more connections seamlessly. This takes out the complexity of programming the paths and routes, and makes deployment of this solution relatively easy.

These devices can be designed to route different traffic to specific connections. As an example, you may want your main business traffic to go out the primary circuit while standard Internet or non-critical data traffic routes out the low cost circuit. This will improve performance since you can reduce non priority traffic on your primary path which frees up critical bandwidth. In either case, the links failover to each other in the event of a circuit outage and alerts can be sent to appropriate individuals within your organization via email.

Cable and DSL

Cable and DSL options provide similar benefits to wireless: They are typically low cost and in many cases take a different path into the building to provide redundant access points. If your provider plans to use the same access path as your standard telecom demarcation, request that they use a different path if possible. Even if they charge additional installation fees for the diverse routing, the one-time cost may well be worth the advantage in redundancy.

Flexible Circuits

Finally, consideration may be given to flexible circuit options now offered by several carriers. Simply put, the carriers will install a circuit that has the potential to go, for example, 10Mbps, however they only set it for 1.5Mbps. In the event of a failure of the main circuit, the redundant carrier is called and their datacenter turns up the bandwidth to 10Mbps. This process can happen within minutes. This provides the cost benefit of a lower circuit for a backup, but when needed, it can quickly scale up to the faster speed. 

In this case, you most likely will pay a premium for the higher bandwidth when turned up, but given the fact that you are in an emergency situation, the additional cost is not as much as a concern at that point considering the alternative of being down. Once your primary circuit is back on line, you simply notify the redundant carrier to turn down the bandwidth back to the idle speed. Therefore you have only paid for the higher speed when you really needed it.

Improved Efficiency for Any Business

Even a small business can deploy redundancy now at a reasonably low cost and without a network engineer, as newer network appliances take the difficulty out of implementing the various solutions.

These are just a few of the ideas that companies are using to provide redundancy at economical prices. What cost-efficient redundancy solutions has your business used?

 

Frank Marro is Regional Vice President responsible for sales management in Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, Ohio and directs MCPc’s national “Carrier Service Program,” which provides solutions for clients looking for voice, video and data circuits for “wide area network” (WAN) connectivity.  Connect with Frank on LinkedIn.

Technology Assessments: What, Why, How?

Do you know which of your servers are good candidates for server virtualization? Do you know what it will cost to implement wireless networking in a particular building? Do you know if you are spending too much on software licensing or maybe not enough? Can you reduce the amount of power your desktop computers use, hence reducing your carbon footprint and saving energy costs? 

These are all common questions and they all have a common answer: To find the answer, your best bet is to perform a technology assessment.

Merriam-Webster defines the word assessment as “the action or an instance of assessing” and it defines assessing as “to determine the importance, size or value of.” Now that is about as clear as mud.  I think a better definition would be “to collect concrete information about something so that educated decisions can be made about its present and/or future state.” 

For example, let’s look at one type of assessment: evaluating the power consumption by the desktop computers in a business environment.

It Ain’t Easy Going Green

Over the past few years, companies have begun to recognize that being “green” should be an important part of their business practices. One way a company can do this is by reducing its carbon footprint or reducing the amount of power that is used by the business as a whole. One type of assessment that is helping companies reduce their carbon footprint is a desktop power assessment. 

A desktop power assessment is simply the monitoring of the computers in your environment to see when they are being used and when they are sitting idle. The assessment involves installing a small piece of software, called an “agent,” on all of the computers and then allowing that agent to collect data about the actual usage of those devices. After a data collection period (normally 30 days), the data can then be used to determine what the usage patterns of your computers are and if you can save money (and the environment) by adjusting their power settings to better match their usage patterns. 

Most computers in office environments are only used between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M. and then, if not powered off, sit idle for the rest of the day and night. However, just because a computer is sitting idle doesn’t mean that it isn’t using any power. Now, one computer sitting idle for 15 hours might not seem like that big of a deal. But what if instead of one computer it is 1,000 or 5,000 computers? Average cost savings can be as much as $75 per year per PC.  The savings around optimizing the power usage of the desktop computers in your environment can only be realized if you first assess the situation and then act on the data collected through that assessment.

Would you buy a house if you knew no inspection or appraisal had ever been done?  I hope not.  Inspections and appraisals are forms of assessments and they provide valuable information about the state and value of a house and the property it is on.  The same concept should apply for most Information Technology projects. 

Can a wireless networking project be successful without a site survey (building assessment) as its foundation? Can a desktop virtualization project be successful without a comprehensive desktop computing assessment? Can you know if you are wasting money on licensing that you do not need or power that is being eaten up by idle computers without assessing these areas of your business? The answer is no. 

Technology assessments provide the concrete data that serves as the foundation for making educated decisions about your IT environment.

 

Jason Dell is a Converged Network Solution Consultant at MCPc, and is responsible for developing and programming custom solutions for clients. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.

 

Image Credit:

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10 Print Management Tips to Save You Money

IT has had its ups and downs over the past couple of years, as economic conditions have required companies to not only cut costs but sometimes to cut spending altogether. While spending on most IT projects fell significantly, the printing business has not skipped a beat. Historical data indicates, as shown in the image below, that printed pages have grown every year since network-connected printers went mainstream in the early 1990’s.

So, with printed pages on a relatively constant upward trend, I get asked all the time about how best to save money in this space. Below are some of my most common suggestions.

10 Ways to Save Money through Active Print Management

1)      Stop printing altogether. Though it may sound crazy, the number-one way to spend less on printing is to stop printing, or at least reduce your printing of non-essential documents. Reducing print volumes is hard because we have trained ourselves to print as a part of our daily routine. However, by performing a thorough review of your business processes, identifying where and when printing occurs and recommending alternatives, you can realize major cost savings across the company if even small adjustments are made by every employee.

2)      Tighten supply chain management of toner and other consumables. There are technologies in the market today that allow you to order toner and other consumables in a just-in-time fashion, delivering toner and other consumables directly to the person responsible for installing it in the printer. This strategy can eliminate toner closets thus freeing up cash that would otherwise be tied up in pre-ordered consumable items. 

3)      Outsource non-strategic printing. Non-strategic printing refers to large jobs that typically require special treatment such as color, gloss, weighted paper and/or binding. This can include large format plotters, training materials, infrequent large jobs and finished marketing materials to name a new examples. Although outsourcing sounds expensive, depending upon your printer use it is very possible that this strategy may actually cost less than leasing, maintaining and using the printer hardware required to meet these occasional needs.

4)      Track your costs. Create a document that tracks and reports your ongoing printing costs. For small operations, this can be as simple as putting together a spreadsheet and updating the source data every month based on output and supplies used. For larger organizations, however, manual cost management is much more challenging. That being said, just like in personal finance, if you aren’t tracking your costs you cannot affect them.

5)      Get an outside opinion. For a number of reasons, most organizations do not have their arms around their printing costs, and often the day-to-day decisions about print strategy are not made at a high enough level within organizations. Getting an outside opinion about your printer environment from an expert such as your manufacturer or VAR may help you find some areas for savings that can be implemented quickly and with little risk.

6)      Replace color printers with monochrome printers. As a rule of thumb, color pages cost eight-to-ten times the amount of monochrome pages and most documents do not need to be printed in color. Based on your print volumes, you may find an immediate and significant ROI by moving away from color on most machines. For those documents that require color, keep several, low-TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) color printers in strategic locations throughout your office environment.

7)      Consider compatible or non-OEM toner. Though OEM toner is guaranteed to give you the highest quality output, most non-OEM toners offer near-OEM performance at significantly lower prices. Keep in mind that a non-OEM or compatible toner strategy requires testing and a commitment to work through occasional toner defect issues. Also, it is common to use compatible monochrome toner while still using OEM color toner for priority print jobs. 

8)      Investigate alternative printer manufacturers. It’s possible that your organization has been purchasing the same brand of printer for many years, for reasons such as standardization, driver compatibility, availability of supplies and familiarity with the technology. Today’s printers, however, incorporate very similar technologies across manufacturers and many have universal print drivers. Reevaluating your standards and using TCO as your baseline for making a decision may lead you to a different brand of printers that will work more efficiently for your needs.

9)      Remove locally attached printers from the environment. Locally attached printers — those that serve only one user — are typically the highest TCO printers in an organization. With only a few exceptions, it is a best practice to push printing to network- connected, shared printers. This strategy can reduce your dependence on high-cost supply items, help managers better evaluate the printer use of subordinates and help you eliminate SKUs from your supply chain management.  Since every printer users a different toner cartridge, eliminating SKUs will ease supply chain management issues experienced by purchasing departments.  Less SKUs means less work.

10)   Invest in print management software. One solution that can assist you in many of the strategies above is to install print management software. Like your other infrastructure-monitoring applications, print management software surveys your organization’s overall print environment and provides you with the data and reports that you need to make changes that directly affect output and costs. Without print management software, having a complete view of your print environment can be a time-consuming and difficult task. For large organizations with 100 or more printers this is an ideal solution. At MCPc, we’ve seen savings up to 8 - 12% from customers that implement print management software along with active monitoring and strategy.

Following one or more of these will help reduce costs and cut spending at the same time.  Which strategy works best for you?  Please feel free to share your best practices by posting a comment.  I look forward to opening up this discussion with you.

 

Jeffrey Goldstein is Senior Consultant at MCPc and is responsible for the delivery of hardcopy and value added services within the Lifecycle Management Group.  Jeff earned his BS in Management of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management from The University of Akron and his MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.  Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

Considering Solid-State Disks For Your Data Storage Environment

Solid-state disks (SSD) are the next major step forward in storage technology. Think of the SSD as you would the more familiar flash drive (memory stick), but in a conventional disk drive form factor.  However, even though an SSD might look physically similar to a conventional hard disk drive, the SSD does not employ spinning metal disks at all. Rather, the SSD utilizes erasable, writeable, cell-based memory chips that can store data reliably even when they’re powered off. You may see the acronym NAND used in descriptions of SSD technology [NAND = Not AND (electronic logic gate)]. 

Vastly improved reliability and performance are the main attractions to SSD technology. When looking at the two images below, take note that unlike the conventional disk drive on the left, the SSD has no moving parts — this is the major reason for the increased reliability offered by SSD technology.

A Little History

I remember back in the early 1980s when the company I was working for bought their first server… for approximately $10K.  About half of the cost of that server was spent on the single, internal 1-GB hard disk drive (no that is not a typo, 1 GB!). It was a 5.25” form factor, full-height SCSI disk drive — which is beastly by today’s standards — and my colleagues and I wondered if we would ever use all of that space.

Of course the ubiquitous, magnetic hard disk drive has come a long way since the early days of 10-MB, 20-MB and 40-MB personal computer disk drives, which typically used the RLL (Run Length Limited) and MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation) encoding schemes that are completely foreign to most computer professionals today. 

These seemingly humble beginnings, and the ever-present requirement for increased drive performance and capacity, have brought us to the comparatively astonishing hard disk drive capacities, performance, reliability and small physical size of modern storage devices. Consider for a moment that quite a few people are walking around with literally gigabytes of music, video and pictures in their pockets stored on devices that fit in the palm of their hands! Lend further consideration to the fact that many of these storage devices are not magnetic hard disk drives, but rather chips or SSDs.

Sidebar: Does anyone remember watching an old episode of the original Star Trek television show where Spock inserted a small rectangular piece of metal into his computer console, and the object was apparently a storage device with no moving parts that contained an enormous amount of data? Well guess what folks — we’re pretty much there!

Current State of Enterprise-Class Disk Storage

In the enterprise, the currently available magnetic hard disk drives are offered with FC (Fibre-Channel), SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) and SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) connectivity. Older IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) and ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) technology can still be found in PCs, and conventional SCSI has pretty much been superseded by SAS.

There is a variation available from a couple of manufacturers that mates an ATA drive with FC connectivity, and this is referred to as FATA. This variation in drive type and connectivity speaks to striking the balance between drive performance, reliability and cost, and is predominately described using the Storage Tier Model. 

Tier 1 is described as the highest performance, most reliable and consequently most expensive storage tier. Tiers 2 and 3 take steps down in performance and reliability, thus lowering drive cost. The savings can be significant, so it is worth making the effort to categorize data into the storage tier model. 

Generally, an organization’s most critical and most frequently accessed data will reside on Tier 1 storage devices. Data that is static, infrequently accessed or judged non-critical to daily operations is generally stored on Tier 2 or Tier 3 storage devices. Software is available to assist in the automation of this ongoing categorization of data.

Solid State Disk Storage in the Enterprise

So what about the potential of using newer SSDs for enterprise-class storage requirements, and where do they fit in the storage tier model? For some time now, SSDs could only be found on the periphery of the storage market, serving those who needed significantly more performance than was available in conventional magnetic hard disk drives. (Demanding streaming video applications is one such usage that comes to mind.) 

The issue with SSD technology to date has been the storage density-to-cost ratio. In other words, SSD technology is quite expensive as compared to conventional spinning disks. This is changing, although slower than many would like. In fact, SSD drives of reasonable size (100GB+) can be found as options in high-end notebook computers from several popular vendors.

SSD in a MacBook Air

When considering enterprise storage, many people use a cost-per-GB or cost-per-TB equation to make purchase desicions. As of this writing we are just on the verge of being able to justify the cost of SSD technology in enterprise-class servers based upon IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) performance. 

Consider that the typical, conventional enterprise-class hard disk drive can deliver roughly 150 to 300 IOPS, compared to SSDs that can deliver approximately 100,000 IOPS, and you begin to realize how some quick math can justify the cost differential for those mission-critical applications wherein a time advantage translates immediately into a business advantage. An example would be the healthcare or financial industries.

The writing is clearly on the wall — as the capacity-to-cost ratio of SSDs continues to get closer to that of conventional hard disk drives, buyers will certainly invest in the newer, faster and more reliable technology. As you may have already surmised, this transition is expected to happen at the Tier 1 storage level first, and it may take significantly longer for SSDs to make their way into the Tier 2 or 3 levels of the storage hierarchy where cost is the paramount consideration.

It is also worth mentioning that adopting SSDs is not simply a matter of swapping out existing hard disks for the new SSDs. New controllers and other electronics are required, and consequently SSDs will more than likely find their way into enterprise environments as part of a larger purchase, such as a storage array, a server or a specialty appliance.

The Advice

If you have not already implemented, or lent consideration to, storage-tiering solutions, you should soon. Why? For most businesses and organizations (and yes, even individuals!), data continues to grow at an unrelenting pace.

One reason is that significantly more transactions are done electronically versus on paper these days. For example: Medical records are now stored electronically, and radiology images are many and large in size (and are also stored electronically). Old paper documents are being converted and stored. Even email has become a mission-critical application in many business environments where it wasn’t just a few years ago, and it presents many storage challenges. Corporate databases are growing in number and size.

We could go on and on, but the point is made that storage needs are continuing to increase, and therefore we would be wise to get a handle on the management of all of this data.

Implementation of a storage management, or tiering, solution now can prepare you for the consideration of implementing SSD storage in the future for your Tier 1 or mission-critical requirements when the time is right. Consequently, it will be much easier to justify the cost if you can demonstrate that you have the data storage environment reasonably under control. Rest assured, adopting a storage management policy and getting ready for SSD in your environment is worthy of your time because technology moves fast, and SSD will be pervasive in the enterprise in just a few years. Are you ready?

 

Perry Szarka is the Datacenter Strategic Business Unit leader at MCPc. He works closely with clients to understand their business objectives and discover solutions to help them achieve their goals.

 

Image credits:

• http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Open_HDD_and_SSD.JPG
• http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3543/3460536004_0e533efd71.jpg

Mobile Data Security Solution: Full Disk Encryption

Years ago, mobile computers were the exception in most businesses.  They were overpriced, under-powered, and you had to meet very special requirements —such as spending a high percentage of your time on the road — to have them.  Rather, most business data was stored on desktop machines that remained in the building at all times and was protected behind multiple layers of security such as:

• Network Firewalls
• Network DMZ
• The walls of the building
• The physical security system of the building
• The security guards
• The security gates

Each of the above attributes represents an obstacle that must be overcome for one to access the data that is contained within your business’s on-site computers and network.  If the network is properly tightened and hardened and your physical security is what it should be, then you have a fighting chance to keep your data secure.  With this kind of security, you know what lines you need to defend — the doors need to be locked, the windows need to be shut and ports be secured and/or closed. 

What I mean to say by all of this is that the battle lines are obvious and defendable.  But what happens when someone can pick up a computer and take it outside of these layers of protection?  What happens when all of this inherent security can no longer effectively protect your company’s information?  What happens when the battle lines get blurry?

The Mobile Workforce

In the third quarter of 2008, laptops shipping from manufacturers surpassed desktops for the first time in the history of the industry.  The workforce is becoming mobile and it doesn’t seem to be trending in any other direction.  If this is the future of our workplace environment, why and how do we deal with the inherent problem of securing the data on these mobile computers?

The “why” question is easy to answer: It is the obligation of every business to protect the private information of their customers.  This holds true for every industry and every sector.  Everybody has heard of HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley and GLBA.  However, most people don’t know that as of December 2008, forty-four states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have enacted legislation requiring notification of security breaches involving personal information.

This means that in most of the United States, if a suspected data breach occurs it must be reported.  This makes mobile computers without full disk encryption high-risk assets.  For example, an incident reported by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2006 involving the personal information of 26.5 million veterans had an estimated cost of 1.59 billion dollars to remediate.  How much do you think a good full disk encryption solution would have cost them?  This isn’t just an issue in the United States either — in the United Kingdom, for example, they have the Data Protection Act of 1998.

As far as the “how” is concerned: For businesses using mobile devices, full disk encryption is a security practice that should be implemented.  Full disk encryption is the process by which your entire hard drive is run through an encryption process.  Once complete, the hard drive is unreadable without the proper decryption keys.  When the proper decryption keys are presented, only the data that is needed at the time is decrypted and presented to the user, thus keeping the process of accessing data fast and reliable while increasing security exponentially.

It has become quite evident that mobile computers are here to stay and the task of properly securing those computers should be directive number one.  The first step in a proper mobile data security plan should be full disk encryption.  Though it is not the only security measure to be taken, it certainly is the top priority for most organizations.  It is the only way to ensure not only peace of mind, but also full compliance with all necessary regulatory bodies.  Full disk encryption is the first line of defense for your data because it protects your data during the times you are not directly engaged with your mobile computer.  These are the times loss and theft are more likely to occur.

Full disk encryption is not the only mobile data security technology that should be considered.  There are technologies like personal software firewalls, file level encryption for highly sensitive data and GPS based asset tracking systems, but they all speak to point problems.  The most secure systems must have a strong foundation and that foundation is full disk encryption.

For more information on the reality of data breaches visit: http://datalossdb.org/

 

Jason Dell is a Converged Network Solution Consultant at MCPc, and is responsible for developing and programming custom solutions for clients. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.

 

Image Credit:

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Telecom Solutions 101: Voice & Data Circuit Basics

Every company, regardless of size, needs connectivity to the “outside world” for voice and data.  Small offices typically use simple analog lines and DSL or cable Internet for cost effective connections. Larger offices need higher capacity for voice connectivity and higher bandwidth for data applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP), video or other data applications. Let’s review the options, how they scale and the benefits of the different solutions.

Voice Connections

The basic voice connection is a simple analog line, commonly referred to as plain old telephone service (POTS) line. Virtually all phone systems accommodate these circuits and companies who use them run local and long distance service over them. Local phone companies still offer features such as call forward, roll over, caller ID and call waiting for a fee. Other businesses may still use a service called CENTREX lines, which used to be popular when phone systems were too costly for smaller companies.

At some point, as a company grows — possibly when you get to 8 or 10 analog lines — it may be more cost-effective to upgrade from analog service to digital service. Most growing companies will migrate to a PRI (Primary Rate Interface), which is a digital circuit that provides 23 digital trunks for inbound and outbound calling. A similar service is a DS-1 or T-1 line, which provides 24 digital channels. 

PRIs and T-1s are used for companies that do a higher volume of calling. This is because PRIs and T-1s offer more trunks (lines) for less cost as well as lower long distance rates.

One thing to be aware of with PRIs is whether the service is “measured” or “non-measured.” “Measured” means that there is a limit on the number of local calls that can be made without a per-minute fee, while “non-measured” means that all local calling is included in the monthly fixed cost. In either case, long distance calls are billed on a per-minute basis.

When comparing PRI costs, remember that a lower cost might mean it is a measured circuit and you will end up paying for local calls. In most cases, a non-measured circuit is preferable because for a slightly higher monthly fee you do not have to worry about how many local calls you are making.

Voice circuits can grow from PRI or DS-1 to larger voice circuits such as DS-3 or OC-3 that high-end call centers or very large companies use. 

Data Connections

Data is where the largest growth and changes have been made in recent years. Carriers have upgraded their networks to deliver high-speed data at very competitive costs.

When we refer to data, we are typically referring to the connections to the public Internet or a private network connection between offices and/or cities. This becomes important when companies want to run voice and video over their networks. The circuits must have the bandwidth to handle the traffic and more importantly, they must have QOS (quality of service) or COS (class of service) to allow the prioritization of video and voice traffic over simple data traffic such as Internet browsing or email. This makes for a much clearer connection and is imperative for eliminating jitter or latency on voice and video transmissions.

Simple Internet access comes in many flavors. On the low end you have “shared services” such as DSL or cable modems. These are low-cost solutions that can be very effective for small offices.  

Beyond those services we move into the traditional Internet circuits. These can be T-1 (1.5 Mbps) or multiples of T-1s (3.0 Mbps, 4.5 Mbps, etc.), and can reach up to and beyond DS-3 (45 Mbps) speeds, but typically require that you terminate the circuits with your own equipment such as routers.

Better yet are Ethernet solutions which do not require client hardware (routers) and are delivered as an Ethernet hand-off. These are very scalable and flexible and usually start at 10 Mbps and go up from there, most commonly up to 100 Mbps. 

Are you confused yet?

Sometimes it is confusing when you compare the low-cost cable Internet service you may have at home that is 10 Mbps to a commercial T-1 that is only 1.5 Mbps, and you may wonder why there is such a difference in cost for a seemingly lower speed circuit? The main reason is due to the fact that in most cases, DSL and Cable solutions are shared services, meaning that many other customers share your connection, and may use the same access that you have at different times, therefore you have the potential to experience disparate performance. (Have you ever noticed at home that sometimes your Internet is really fast and other times it’s slow? Well, that’s why!) 

For business circuits, the access is not shared and is instead totally dedicated to that one customer so the speed is fixed and symmetrical (same speed up and down). The up and down speeds on shared services are typically different, i.e. 3 up – 10 down. This is most prevalent in DSL, for example, ADSL or Asynchronous DSL (speeds up and down are different) verses SDSL or Synchronous DSL (speeds up and down are the same). SDSL is sometimes called Commercial Grade DSL.

Wireless data connections are also becoming popular and carriers such as Lightyear, Verizon and Sprint have offerings that are cost effective and have decent bandwidth.

WAN (Wide Area Network) Connections

Companies that have multiple locations need connectivity. Often, the connections must be compliant with industry regulations relating to security (healthcare, financial, and so on). The simple way to do the connections is through Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections over the public Internet. As long as the site has an Internet connection, a secure VPN can be established using firewalls or other similar hardware. This is the most economical solution for WANs, however it has its drawbacks.

VPN Firewall

As mentioned earlier, the challenge with VPNs over the public Internet is that there is no QOS or COS, so all packets travel at the same priority. Voice or video do not have priority over any other data, often causing quality problems. For this reason, VPNs are not a solid solution for any site that has more than a few employees or where the demands for voice and video are high.

Options beyond this are to install either point-to-point private networks or MPLS (Multiple Protocol Label Switching). A point-to-point circuit is a good solution if there are only two sites and no growth is expected.  However, if there are more than two sites or plans to expand, MPLS is the absolute best solution.

MPLS circuits take any type of traffic (Multiple Protocol) and prioritize the way different packets (data, voice, or video) are transmitted over the circuit. This is done by tagging each packet with what type of packet it is (Label Switching). For example, if two packets hit the circuit at the same time and want to travel from point A to point B and one packet is voice while the other is data, the MPLS circuit will give priority to the voice packet. This means that you have QOS or COS with MPLS and the voice or video quality is now assured.

The other major advantage is that MPLS allows for fully meshed connectivity for multiple sites. This makes for much easier designs relating to disaster recovery solutions and back-ups.  MPLS is a private IP connection and meets all requirements for industry compliance and security and can be run through regular or multiple T-1s or Ethernet.

There are options to get Internet access off of the MPLS connections if you desire, via cloud computing solutions. This means you can share your one connection for multiple accesses and may be a better way to deliver Internet across your enterprise. Alternatively, all remote sites could “home run” back to the headquarters over the private MPLS and hop on a single Internet circuit at that point. Which option is best depends on the design philosophy within your organization.

Hybrid Circuits

Finally, we need to briefly touch on the converged circuits that most carriers offer. They can be called different names such as “Converged Circuit,” “Flex Circuit” or “Dynamic Circuit” but they all do basically the same thing — through one connection (1.5 Mbps, 3.0 Mbps, 10 Mbps whatever), they deliver multiple services such as:

• Local calling
• Long distance calling
• Internet access
• WAN connectivity options (ability to connect to other converged circuits in your enterprise)

Bundling the services provides some benefits such as:

• Overall costs are typically lower
• Single point of contact for everything
• One bill to pay

Additionally, depending on the carrier they may offer a bundle of long distance minutes along with the service or greatly reduced calling rates. 

These circuits are very viable solutions for small-to-medium sized businesses. One drawback is the fact that if your one connection goes down you lose local calling, long distance calling and Internet access. Therefore, some companies will install one or two analog lines outside or their converged circuit to have a safety net back up capability in the event of that circuit failing.

Summary

This discussion was intended as an overview. My hope is that for those learning about their voice and data options as their company grows, it provided a better understanding of some of the options available today.

Subscribe to the MCPc blog to stay up-to-date as we dive deeper into the subject of voice and data solutions, as well as other technology solutions important to today’s growing business.

 

Frank Marro is Regional Vice President responsible for sales management in Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, Ohio and directs MCPc’s national “Carrier Service Program,” which provides solutions for clients looking for voice, video and data circuits for “wide area network” (WAN) connectivity.  Connect with Frank on LinkedIn.

 

Image Credits:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/192/499899378_d99ef55379.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Netgear_ProSafe_Dual_WAN_VPN_Gigabit_Firewall_FVS336G_front.jpeg

Blogging is Not a Weather Condition & Other Marketing Lessons

One year ago, MCPc ventured into what many thought was a “small website redesign” project. (Just between us, this thought never crossed my mind.) Before we could put the old site to rest, there were many unanswered questions that were critical to MCPc presenting who we are, the expertise we hold and what value we provide to our customers. 

Though we are a technology solutions provider with more than 40 years of experience, we were new to several emerging online technologies ourselves. The journey thus far has been interesting, challenging and rewarding, and today I wanted to share a few lessons I’ve learned in the process.

Lesson #1:  A website redesign must start with defining or redefining your company’s unique value from the eyes of all stakeholders.

After dozens of questionnaires littered with hundreds of questions, we determined our messaging and proceeded to website design and content development. Six months later, on January 11, 2010, we publicly launched our new site (98 brand new pages just to start). It was the greatest example of collaboration I’ve experienced in my career thus far, as every member of the MCPc management team was involved. We could not have accomplished this without their guidance, and I would like to shout out a big thank you (you know who you are) for their hard work.

 

Lesson #2:  Get started in social media & thank those who help you get there.

In addition to all of the new content developed for MCPc.com, our new site launch was also MCPc’s inauguration into this strange new world of social media — starting with the MCPc blog. Without knowing what to really expect, I had six staff members willingly agree to “be a blogger.” What this meant…well, we were all about to find out.

A special thanks goes out to Lance, Ira, Jeff, Jason D., Beth, Perry and Jason T., who endured many hours of writing, tweaking and even more tweaking to deliver relevant, informative and thought-provoking commentaries to our online community. Together, they have contributed 32 new pages of fresh new content on our site. 

I would also be remiss if I did not thank my “significant others” at PR 20/20 for their exceptional knowledge and direction. These are a team of people who care very much about the success of MCPc and our goals and objectives. This partnership has resulted in unprecedented growth and effectiveness of our website in its first six months.

But the number-one reason for investing in our blog is you — our customers, readers and future customers. If your inbox is anything like mine, about every two minutes you sigh at the dozens of new, unread emails. Though some may truly provide quality information, I know that if I read them all the quality of my own work would suffer. 

We understand your time constraints and pressures. Truly, we live it here too. Your readership tells us that we are delivering a product of value, which is our one and only goal. Thank you.

Lesson #3: Evaluate your successes so far, and adapt moving forward.

The Internet provides a venue for people to seek out new information and resources. That being said, understanding what kinds of content our readers are most interested in is the key to being able to consistently provide valuable information. The most-read posts from our blog’s first six months include:  

• Plan Your Projects like you Plan your Dinner: Mixing Dinner, IT and Project Management by Ira Grossman
• Focus on Leasing: Capital vs. Operating Lease by Jeffrey Goldstein
• Toner Recycling and Reuse by guest blogger Michael Ducey
• Data Deduplication Basics by Perry Szarka
• Server Virtualization and the Dynamic Datacenter by Jason Dell
• How Our Positive Company Culture Breeds Success by Beth Stec
• Learning From Partners: CIOs - Don't Let the Cloud Run You Over by Lance Frew

On the horizon are innovative and thought-provoking articles on a wide range of topics that we hope will provide you, the leaders in today’s complex IT world, some excellent food for thought: 

• Economical and Effective Redundancy Solutions (by Frank Marro, a new addition to our blogging team)
• Technology Assessments: What, Why and How
• Key Reasons to Consider Email Archiving
• Top Ten Tips on Saving Money in Your Printing and Imaging Area
• You Can’t Hire Attitude
• When is Virtualization Right for Your Business? 

Months ago, when I told my mom about our blog, she thought it was a weather condition. Although we are not where my mom is, we are still learning. 

What we do know is that our employees get to hear from some of the brightest minds in our organization on a regular basis. Our bloggers get to share their years of expertise, hours of training and extensive engagements with customers across all industries, and in businesses of all sizes, with the very people knee-deep in the plethora of changing technology. 

Lesson #4:  Communicate, communicate, communicate: Keep people informed, ask for feedback and act on it. 

So now it’s time to hear from you. What have you gained from our blog? What topics or questions would you like to see covered in the next six months? We’re listening and are ready to provide you with the information you seek.

Thanks for reading; stay tuned for new things to come. Oh, and Happy Independence Day! We have much to celebrate.

Subscribe to receive MCPc blog updates by RSS or email. 

 

Anne Browning is Marketing Manager for MCPc and is responsible for the development and execution of traditional and non-traditional strategies to better communicate with, reach and serve IT professionals. Connect with Anne on LinkedIn.

 

Image Sources:

http://www.smenigin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/social-media.jpg

http://www.krishnade.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Thank_you.jpg

Why You Should Be Friends With The HR Department

The typical perception of HR is, unfortunately, based on little more than that we hire and fire.  Don't get me wrong, my profession does have its fair share of being the bad guy - when we are in "grim reaper" mode, or have to enforce the dress code policy, or push managers to enforce disciplinary actions when needed.  But there's something important for any employee at any organization to know: We do so much more!

"HR professionals have evolved from the behind-the-scenes administrative role of the 20^th century to active involvement in shaping company policy." - Society for Human Resource Management's handbook, "Choose a Career.  Choose HR."

Many people that choose to make their career in HR do so because of their interest in people and how employees relate to a business' success.  I know from experience that at MCPc, our HR department is genuinely interested in the people who work with us and what makes them tick.

Rather than talking to the HR team only when you have a question about your benefits, I recommend that you "make friends" with the department.  Here are three reasons why:

• One of the key functions of an HR department is to act as an advocate for the employees. We are the messengers between management and "the people." If you want your opinion to be heard, give us some feedback. We want to hear from you and for you to help us understand how to make the workplace a more productive, enjoyable and welcoming environment.
• HR has the ability to change things. We write the policies, correct? So, if you can articulate how a flex-time policy would benefit the company or think a particular manager needs to work on their delivery, tell us and we'll make sure the right people hear about it.
• We tend to be quite honest. HR representatives are fortunate enough to be privy to company information that some people don't have the opportunity to hear regularly. Join us in the lunchroom or stop us in the hall for a quick chat and ask us about what you want to know. By learning more about the company and its goals, you may find new ways to advance your career and the business.

My first manager out of college used to scoff at new graduates who would answer "I like people," when asked why they chose a career in HR.  I mean, with all the millions of personalities out there, people can be challenging, complex and even a little crazy. 

But what I've learned throughout my career is that at the core, people are interesting and truly are the greatest asset that any company has.  By giving your HR department a chance to get to know you and understand your needs and goals, they'll have the opportunity to make new policies that improve company culture and provide more value to employees at all levels of the organization.   

The MCPc HR Team on Tropical Hawaiian Friday

Now, I realize some of you reading this may not be used to an HR Department like ours at MCPc that knows how to have fun and even be silly at times but we are a reflection of our culture (or maybe our culture is a reflection of us).  Sure, we know how to adhere to policy and play by the rules but we're not your average HR Department. We are truly interested in the well-being of every single person who works here and we try to have fun every day in addition to working hard. 

It's like my Dad always says, "If you can't have a few laughs, it's not worth getting up in the morning."     (Happy Fathers Day Dad!)

Ok, so before I get too off track... when are you going to take that trip to the HR office and reintroduce yourself?

 

Beth Stec is the Director of Corporate Communications and Human Resources at MCPc, and is responsible for the development and management of personnel programs and policies.  Connect with Beth on LinkedIn.