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Start Up Requiring Robust Infrastructure – From Planning to Implementation
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Learn why ERP tools are an critical component for many businesses.
Why a Business Continuity Plan is Essential
Learn why your company needs a business continuity plan.
Ransomware 101
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Cloud Services and the SMB Revolution
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Star Wars weapons can help you find the best backup and restore plan for your business
/in Blog, Business Continuity /by wpengineYou can create the best cybersecurity, cloud, and help desk solutions, but in the event that a disaster strikes your business, none of that will matter if you are not operational. Estimates of the cost of downtime range from $8,600 for small businesses to $100,000 for larger businesses. To avoid these astronomical costs, many businesses turn to an alternate site to backup and restore business operations.
Smooth operation of your business depends on a consistently reliable physical location for your employees and your equipment. To understand the three primary forms of backup sites – cold, hot, and warm – we’re going to examine three of the famous weapons from The Star Wars Saga.
Wondering what weapons have to do with a backup site? Allow me to explain.
Here’s the scenario:
You are a young Jedi Padawan during the Clone Wars. Your name is (First Name=take your real first name and add a hyphen somewhere at random, Last Name=the first syllable in your mom’s maiden name), and you have been on the trail of bounty hunter Cyb Rattack on the planet Datalos. Unfortunately, you have lost your lightsaber. What’s a Jedi to do?
The Blaster: the Cold Site Weapon
If you’re going to have any chance of stopping your enemy, you’re going to need a new weapon. If you’re limited on funds, you’ll probably want to opt for a good old-fashioned blaster.
A blaster is nothing like the graceful lightsaber, but at the very bare minimum it will get the job done. With a few extra credits and some elbow grease, it can easily be modified to meet your specific needs.
This is the same concept as a cold recovery site. If your office is hit with a disaster, you can choose a cold site to get back to business, but this is definitely the bare bones approach.
A cold site will most likely have only space, power, and utilities. You’re starting from scratch here. A cold site, like a blaster, is perfect for those who need something affordable that will do the trick – albeit sans all bells, whistles.
The Lightsaber: the Hot Site Weapon
When Anakin Skywalker loses a lightsaber, he doesn’t settle for a blaster pistol, he immediately finds or procures a brand new lightsaber. In fact, most young Jedi have to construct their own lightsabers as a ritualistic rite of passage.
The Lightsaber is not a cheap weapon. The construction of this beautiful laser sword requires a lot of effort, and even on the open market, it will cost quite a bit. If you have the credits and the time, it is the number-one best option for your next weapon. The same goes for a hot recovery site.
When you opt for a hot recovery site, you are getting all of the top-notch recovery services available. Your recovery site will be specifically designed to mirror the infrastructure of your original business, allowing for a seamless transition and eliminating expensive downtime.
The hot site will already have all of your data transferred, and will require no time delay in resuming network functions.
The hot recovery site, while the most costly of options, is the closest you will get to operating out of your original business location. This may not be a viable option for all businesses, but it is definitely the premium option, and best when seamless restoration is a necessity.
The Vibrosword: the Warm Site Weapon
If you’ve seen the newest Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, you’ve seen the red-clad Praetorian Guard fight a wicked battle using vibroswords. These weapons, which utilize an electrically charged blade, are the only swords that can stand up against a lightsaber.
If you happen to have a decent amount of credits, but not enough for the real thing, you could purchase a vibrosword. This weapon is capable of superior movement, though it will involve less grace than a lightsaber and more of the chaos of nature. It is a perfect hybrid of the minimalism of a blaster and the power of a lightsaber.
You were most comfortable with a lightsaber, and it will take some effort getting to know your new weapon.
A warm recovery site is very similar. With this option, you’ll find an internet connection and available servers for network transfer, but there will be a brief delay while you move over network functions. Where the cold site was basically an empty room, the warm site will often include workspaces for key staff who may be displaced.
The warm recovery site won’t break the bank and you’ll end up getting more functionality, response and productivity with your space.
Use the Force
Unfortunately, backup and data recovery is something 3 of 4 businesses aren’t planning for.
Becoming familiar with the available weapons in your backup recovery arsenal will help you choose the best option for your business when the time comes.
Please give us a call or send us a message and we’ll share some more information about how a backup site would work for your business.
You’re also invited to check out our recent whitepaper on the best business continuity plans. We’re happy to help, no strings attached.
The top 5 reasons to prepare your business continuity plan
/in Blog, Business Continuity /by wpengineThe last thing you want is to go out of business in the event of an unforeseen circumstance. A business continuity plan is essential for modern businesses in any industry. Regardless of what kind of technology you use, think of this plan as a blueprint for keeping your business running in the event of a major disaster.
Disasters come in many forms, including natural disasters, human error, cyber attacks, and insider threats. The worst disasters always have the same effect: stopping your business dead in its tracks.
Sometimes, it’s hard to really conceptualize the importance of a continuity plan without looking at what happens if you don’t have one.
Take, for instance, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Urban legend has it that the conflagration started when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern in the family barn. The fire’s origin is debatable. The aftermath, however, is well documented and devastating by any standards.
The Great Chicago fire completely destroyed 3.2 miles in the heart of Chicago, rapidly consuming homes and businesses. The inferno resulted in the death of 300 citizens, the destruction of 17,500 buildings, Of the 300,000 residents of Chicago, 100,000 were left homeless.
The 185 firefighters employed within Chicago were ill-equipped to handle the ferocious spread of the fire, which was attributed to a drought as well as the mostly wooden construction of the city’s buildings, roads, and sidewalks.The total cost of the fire was estimated at $222 million, or roughly $4.6 billion today.
When a disaster this large happens, the only way for a business to survive is to have an understanding of what needs to be protected, how you want to respond, and which practices to follow to continue operations. Here are the 5 most important things to focus on when putting together a continuity plan.
1. Minimizing Downtime
The primary reason for a business continuity plan is to eliminate downtime. 75% of businesses don’t have any sort of business continuity plan or disaster recovery plan. Skipping out on a continuity plan is not only reckless, but extremely expensive.
ITIC’s latest survey data finds that 98% of organizations say a single hour of downtime costs over $100,000.Those aren’t numbers to be ignored. Whether you suffer a natural disaster or a cyber attack, the only way to stay in business is to continue your work as soon as possible. Otherwise, you may very well go out of business.
2. Protecting What’s Important
A business continuity plan should detail the necessary components and data that will keep your business running. This involves inventory of backup devices and cloud services, as well as an outline of your data backup specifics (when and where) and an overview of how company assets will be handled when disaster strikes.
3. Communicating with Confidence
One of the primary benefits of creating a business continuity plan is to establish a state of order amid the chaos. Your plan should focus on a chain-of-command delegation of responsibility, and should include reliable communication channels prioritized for contacting employees, partners and customers to minimize breakdowns in collaboration and service.
4. Resuming Operations
The goal of any business continuity plan is to get you back in business as soon as possible. Many companies have taken the extra precaution of utilizing backup and recovery sites. These are off-campus facilities where your business can be relocated to continue operations regardless of any damage or limited access you may experience.
These sites run the gamut from “cold sites”, which are bare-boned facilities without any installed operations, to “hot sites”, which are exact duplicates of your current operations.
5. Ensuring Your Recovery
A recent report finds that 60% of small businesses close within 6 months of a significant cyber attack. But this doesn’t have to be you. Implementing a business continuity plan to your current backup and data recovery solutions will allow you the peace of mind that even if disaster strikes, you don’t have to become a statistic.
We Are Here to Help
CCS Technology Group would be happy to help your business create a specific business continuity plan. We have proven experience developing solutions that will keep you in business no matter what outside forces may arrive.
It’s important to plan ahead. It might just save your business.
Give us a call or send us a message to learn more.
Star Wars is basically an ad for ERP systems
/in Blog, Productivity /by wpengineWe’ve all seen the commercial where the entire concept is “Don’t do X or you’re totally doomed. Do Y instead.” Like, some guy picks up a can of generic beer and he’s lonely and depressed, but then he grabs a Bud Light and he’s surrounded by beautiful women and fancy cars. That kind of commercial.
Well, it turns out that the Star Wars saga is basically a cautionary tale for what happens if you don’t use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Here’s why…
1. It’s an ERP!
Every time any jedi in Star Wars wants to get anything done, they have to hop in a starfighter and zip from planet to planet. You would think with an entire galaxy to protect, they might create some sort of proprietary ERP system to save the jedis some precious time and fuel.
Example: Obi-Wan needs to jet off to planet Kamino to check up on some poisonous dart and then finds that the Republic invested tons of money in clones. RED FLAG!
With an ERP system, all resources in your business are live. If $50,000 is spent by your clone recruitment department, you’re going to be able to pull that information on the fly and save yourself a trip across the galaxy – not to mention saving those funds for lightsaber components and blue milk.
Tracking live resources is one of the most important parts of any fast-moving business, and so is communication.
When you utilize an ERP system optimized for your operations and priorities, your departments have a vehicle for interdepartmental coordination, communication and efficiency. The reduced payroll hours and added transparency ERP delivers creates an immediate reporting channel and enhances efficiency throughout your business.
This can mean big savings and profits. Businesses using an ERP saw an average increase in profitability of 10% over two years in a recent Aberdeen study. Additionally, 96% of the top-performing companies experiencing growth rely on ERP solutions.
2. Use the ERP, Luke…
Arguably, the greatest tragedy in the Star Wars saga is that the friendship and guidance of Obi-Wan is not enough to save Anakin from joining the dark side of the Force. Obi-Wan, clouded by his good intentions, is unable to see the dangerous path his friend has followed. This, of course, leads to the death of Padme, the birth of Vader, and years of chaos and destruction for our favorite galaxy far, far away.
If you are fortunate in your business, you are probably so busy that you don’t have time to crunch numbers and run manual reports, or to update forecasts based on these predictions. The good news is that unlike Obi-Wan, you can make good use of an ERP system to keep your forecasts regular and current.
ERP systems gather live data for your reporting requirements, and it can predict future patterns based on this data. From anticipating office expenses to scaling workforce resources to predicting network traffic patterns, capturing and analyzing this information in real time according to your operational KPIs is priceless when planning for your business growth.
3. The ERP is strong with this one…
When you utilize ERP systems, you also benefit from scalability. Both the Empire and the Republic suffered from gross inefficiencies.
The Republic had a bunch of clones sitting on a planet working out and training, not knowing how many they would need. They then needed to rush production on hundreds of thousands more to fight the Empire’s drone forces.
With a proper ERP system, the Republic could have used forecasting to know how many soldiers they would need for each battle, and then they could have scaled quickly and efficiently to deliver the right amount and type of soldiers. Why send 20,000 to each planet when 200 would do?
Just shoot us a message or give us a call, and we can chat about how to support and optimize your business operations with the right ERP capabilities.
May the Force be with you…