Computer Network Consulting

My son came home last Friday for Christmas break. He had just been home a couple of weeks earlier for Thanksgiving. I was apprehensive that his return would be stressful on our household. He hadn't lived with us during the summer so the longest he'd been with us in over a year was the four days at Thanksgiving. So far, my concerns have been greatly overblown. He has pitched in and helped out without complaint or even prompting in some cases. He's a different person than he was a year ago.

I find the same to be true with many of my former Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers. At the time that we parted ways, each of us had good reason to end the business relationship. In the cases where they've been willing to try again and we've been willing to try again, we've established a stronger and better relationship than we'd had before. Some of it is because they experienced a different kind of IT support services with the provider who replaced us. Some of it is because they, and we, have grown in the time we spent apart. Most of it is because we recognized that even though we'd had some difficult times, we were good for each other and usually good to each other.

I'm launching a campaign next year to reach out to many of those former computer network services customers and invite them to try the relationship again. I know we've changed and I imagine they have too. Our history together should help to make us better for each other.

Twitter. Surely by now you've heard of it even if you're not sure what it is. Don't feel bad about it. "What is Twitter?" was one of the most asked questions at Ask.com in the past year. It seems as if you'd better find an answer soon though. While I've been a Twitter user for more than a year now, I still search for a good reason to tell my Indianapolis computer consulting customers that they should use it.

According to a recent survey conducted by cScape, almost 44 percent of companies plan to increase their spending on Twitter activities in 2010. It seems they believe this is the best online medium for engaging customers. I say "they" because I'm still a skeptic about the successful use of Twitter. While estimates of the number of users range as high as 80 million, more than half of all users never come back after the first 30 days -- many never return after initially creating their account. In addition, the company doesn't yet know how it will generate revenue from its user base. If someone doesn't figure out a killer business use for Twitter soon, the whole thing may come tumbling down.

Nonetheless, I keep up with my account and tweet every couple of days to my 60 or so followers. Some of my computer network services customers have created accounts, but they keep asking me what they should do with them. And I just can't give them a good answer. So, if nearly half of all businesses invest in Twitter activities in 2010, the other half may have an advantage in marketing. 

Becky Hardwick was telling us about her four year old daughter's ability to add small numbers. The interesting thing was that her daughter couldn't add two numbers, like 2 plus 3, but she could quickly calculate the answer to, "If I have 2 apples and you have 3 apples, how many apples to we have?"

This points out an interesting thing that our brains tend to do. We compartmentalize our knowledge like Becky's daughter. You've probably seen it. A person can remember all of the stats for a major league pitcher's entire career but he can't remember a phone number long enough to cross the room. This phenomenon must have something to do with the way we're wired together. It becomes a problem when working on the networks of our Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers. That's why we use a collaborative approach to designing and managing our provision of computer network services.

Many of my computer outsourcing peers tend to assign a single network technician to each of their customers, ostensibly for consistency and uniformity. In reality, they are guaranteeing these knowledge compartmentalization problems will sneak into every computer network they support. My IT consulting company makes sure that everybody gets to see and experience all of the computer networks we support. You never know when someone needs to count apples instead of numbers.

I just read that a new iPhone has been detected in the wild. A public Internet provider in San Francisco found a device in its access logs that identified itself as "iPhone 3.1". That's a version above the 3GS, which identifies itself as "iPhone 2.1" or the "iPhone 1.2" that is the 3G. Combine that with the recent release of new Android phones from Motorola and HTC and it creates a conundrum for this Indianapolis small business computer consultant. One of the most difficult questions for us to answer for our computer outsourcing customers is, "Which smartphone should I buy?"

The answer depends on so many things, not the least of which being personal preference. With each generation of phone, the ability to synchronize to email, calendar, and contacts gets easier (Blackberry is an exception, but it at least doesn't get harder). At that point, my network technicians are content with any choice. Not me. I want to put the closest thing to the perfect device that is available into my computer services customer's hands. I want to know when they'll use it, where they'll use it, how they'll use it, and how they intend to treat it. Will it be a prized possession kept safe from all dangers, or will it be treated no better than a 19 cent Write Brothers pen?

Understandably I obsess about this particular choice more than most IT services decisions. This is the area in which the geek in me expresses itself most. However, it is indicative of the way in which we go about recommending any element of our customers' computer network services. We want the best answer we can find, given the business constraints and availability.

I met with a couple of guys this morning who are about to launch a new business. My computer tech support business is going to help set them up. As we talked, I found it interesting that they didn't initially expect me to add to the conversation. They had a list of questions that they wanted answered by an IT consultant so they could make decisions about next steps. As I started asking clarifying questions of them they began to see the real value of a good computer outsourcing company.

The trick isn't in knowing how to set up a computer network. It's in knowing what the small business is going to do with the network. Most IT services providers forget this fact after they've been in business for a few years. It's forgetting this that puts so many of my Indianapolis IT outsourcing peers out of business. The number one job of an Information Technology provider is to make the small business owner's job easier to do.

At the end of the meeting this morning, these two guys shook my hand and turned their attention away from technology needs to the innumerable other things that have to be done in order to launch their new enterprise. I'm excited to be a part of it all.

With the frequent announcement of security breaches at large and small companies that barrage us each day, one would think that no computer network is secure. As I've frequently argued, that is likely true. However, we hear about more and more breaches because there are more and more Information Systems to be breached. Even with all of the global super-hacker geeks, the vast majority of security breaches still happen thru inadvertent leaks on the part of people who have authorized access or disclosure of passwords that allow unauthorized people into secure data.

I tell my Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers that we can take all of the precautions that are considered reasonable and then monitor suspicious behavior. It doesn't guarantee that a breach won't happen, but it's the most we can do. Lately, a bigger concern for me has been the change in attitude toward personal information security. The generation that is growing up on Web 2.0 has a completely different view of privacy than those of us who are a part of the baby boom. We get suspicious of people who want to know too much information about us without giving us good reason. They get suspicious of people who aren't willing to share every intimate detail of their lives with anyone who casually asks. When they are in charge, we'll be asked what we're trying to hide when we ask for privacy.

I spoke at a memberhip meeting of the Indiana Construction Association a couple of weeks ago. The topic was social media marketing, but we expanded it to include other aspects of online marketing. At the end, one of the attendees came up to me to say that his network support staff discouraged them from using social media sites and he was glad. He said he wasn't sure he could trust himself not to expose corporate secrets "in the heat of the moment" online. If more people thought like him about managing themselves with respect to private data, much of our fear of privacy loss would go away.

When I was in the Air Force I would sometimes come home and, within a few minutes of being there, my wife would say to me, "You spent a lot of time with Colonel Jones today didn't you?" The first few times I would acknowledge that I had and wonder how she knew. I thought perhaps his cologne leached onto me and she could smell it. Eventually I had to ask. She said, "Whenever you spend time with Col Jones, you come home cussing like a drunken sailor."

She was right. Col Jones was a brilliant man, but he had a mouth like, well, a drunken sailor. It turns out that foul language is not only a way to express agony, but a way to alleviate it as well. Recent studies confirm that people who swear can withstand pain longer than those who don't. That explains why those of us in the computer outsourcing business tend to swear more often than most of our peers. Imagine if you had to spend the bulk of your day dealing with computer tech support from a guy named "Bob" in India? That's the life of a network technician.

Now we don't tend to curse and swear in the presence of our Indianapolis small business computer support customers. We wait until we get back in the safety of our office where the free flow of agony relieving language can be heard at a volume considerably above a whisper. We maintain enough decorum to avoid a comparison to Animal House, but we are accustomed to frequent short bursts of four letter words. Now we know it enhances our ability to withstand the hard parts of IT support services.

While Apple has managed to maintain an image of being virus-impervious, most of us in the computer outsourcing business have always contended that the reason there weren't many native Mac viruses was because there just weren't enough Macs to make it worthwhile for evil hackers to bother with it when there were far more Windows PCs out there to attack. In fact, as the Mac continues to becomes more popular on the Intel platform, I imagine computer help desks all over the country will start to see more infected ones. The popularity of the iPhone (30 million sold and counting) has already attracted some attention. A young man in Australia has written a worm that infects the iPhone while pretending to be a Rick Astley screen saver. I have to admit that I didn't know who Astley was, but this is sure to raise his popularity briefly.

One of the most frequent questions from my Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers is, "What can I do to ensure that my network is safe from hackers?" I always answer the same way: "Disconnect your machines from the Internet."

That's the only way to be sure, and even then you may have a mole in your own organization who ferrets out data on a flash drive. (How about that, two rodents in the same sentence?) Data security is an important element of any good network design. We do all we can to keep our computer network services customers' data safe. The best analogy I can use is your home security. You lock the doors when you leave to keep bad people out. If you feel you're at a higher risk, you turn on an alarm as well. These measures will keep out most burglars or thieves. They'll just move on to the next house in search of one without an alarm or with an unlocked door. However, if the burglar is looking to get something from you in particular, your locks and alarms become a nuisance to him. He'll have to plan better and it will take longer, but if he's committed, he'll get around your reasonable precautions. The same holds true for your network. Practice safe computing and avoid upsetting anyone who might have crazy tech skills.

If those infected iPhone users had practiced safe computing, they wouldn't have jailbroken their phones, and the worm wouldn't have gotten in.

Nobody enjoys the process of cleaning up but once it is finished you feel better about everything. Just like your home and office, computers need to be cleaned up too. There are several locations on your computer where files can sit for years without being removed and over time these files can take up space or slow down your computer. There are also addons running in your browser that can slow your browsing experience down and software that you may not have even known you had that is running when your computer boots up. All of these combined will decrease your performance and can make you aggrivated at the speed.

We are an Indianapolis IT consulting company that wants to make everything run as smooth as possible for our network support customers. One of the frequent things we do is clean out their computers. We clean out these files and programs on routinely and are working toward making the process automated so your computer never slows down. Tired of your slow computer at the office? We can get it running like new again.

A recent eWeek article recalled the top five priorities of the IT industry. According to Doug Tracy, CIO of Dana Holdings, the top five are:

• Set a Vision
• Manage Vendors
• Improve Process
• Standardize Operations
• Test Open Source

I found this list interesting because it contains the elements of our Pertingo(r) Computer Support service that most of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers overlook when they are looking for a good computer consultant. We know that our customers use price and convenience as the primary factors in deciding on a computer support service. It isn't until they've had a provider who looks at things like these top five priorities for them that they come to realize the full impact of good IT support services.

• We work with each of our clients to develop a vision for their technology that fits the vision they have for their company as a whole.
• We have always described ourselves as the "one throat to choke" to our customers. We manage the activities of every other provider who touches their computer network.
• We take the time to learn how our customers do their jobs so we can make suggestions to improve the process.
• We strive to standardize, as much as possible, all of the elements of their network.
• We're always playing with something new to see if it has applicability in our customers' IT environments.

In short, we are always working on those top five priorities. Any good IT support services company should do the same. Many don't. Sure, we are also doing those routine things as efficiently as we can. But we don't add value if all we do is fix broken stuff and wait for you to tell us what new stuff you'd like to buy. Our job is to maximize the benefit you get from having bought all this stuff in the first place. That's good IT.

I have a second grade child that has been excelling at her private christian school.  She has been at this school for the last four years. Before Kindergarten and first grade, I compared what she was being taught in the private school to the public school curriculum. For the first two years the standards were higher at the private school so, I didn't evaluate against the public school for second grade. Boy was I wrong in not doing that!  The private school's standards fell below the public school.  When I approached the school to see why and what needed to be done to challenge my daughter, I was informed that it was too hard and I would need to do all the challenging at home. I challenge my child at home but it does need to be reinforced by the education system. Well the public school has increased what they require the children to know. If I had kept my daughter in the private school she would have been behind and potentionally not able to catch up.

What does this story have to do with computers, consulting, etc.?  It is never bad to evaluate who you are using against other people and services.  If you have a good network support group or computer outsourcing company, they will want to know where they are behind and will want to improve.  If the school had said, "Let's try these things to get back to that higher standard," we would have stayed. We liked the school, we liked the people. As I am sure you are with the people that support your computer network. If you don't like the company that supports you or you don't like the people that support you, maybe you need to evaluate why you use them. If you've talked to them and gotten answers like my private school gave me, you should see what other options are available. My small busines computer support company takes feedback from our customers extremely seriously. We don't take a squeaky wheel approach to it either. We assume that if one company is telling us they have a problem, many are feeling the same pain and we need to make changes quickly.

Don't allow your computer network services company to take your business for granted. Make them work to continue to earn your business. We know that's what our customers expect, and we do all we can to deliver. Every IT consultant in the nation should do the same.

One of mycolleagues and I went to the gym after work the other day to work out.  As the workout went on we both noticed how sore we were becoming but said that's good because it means we are improving ourselves.  It is that way for our Indianapolis small business computer support customers as well.  As their businesses mature and grow, they have to keep exercising them to keep them strong and growing.  Our task as their computer consultants is to work along side them so their technology can change as it needs to.  Sometimes, we are involved in those planning meeting but other times we are not.  Often, people don't realize that a decision they're make directly impacts their computer network and should at least include input from the outsourced IT department.  We have had trouble with a couple of clients lately in this area.  One of them uses email to run their business.  Due to the amount of email they were storing we needed to make changes to their system to allow them to keep the email in the way that they prefer. We attempted to change their behavior by archiving email instead of keeping it. They decided as an organization that they wanted to keep the email. ( As their computer consultants we can only advise them.) So, we spent many late nights dealing with corrupt mail storage to get them working. The reality is that they have outgrown their current configuration and need to do some significant upgrades. So even though the large bill for equipment may be painful, it is necessary for them to continue to grow and develop.

This incident reminded me that they hired us to be their computer consultants. Our not saying something turned out to be more painful than just telling them what they needed to hear and addressing it from there.

Part of being with IT support companies is getting to know new technology. This technology may be new devices, phones, software or, in this case, an operating system. A few of us at Port-to-Port Consulting have been running Windows 7 on our systems for months now to get a full understanding of how it works and to figure out the shortcuts.

Windows 7 is much faster than Vista. The average startup time for my Windows 7 computer is twice as fast as the average startup time for my Vista computer. It is also much more stable than Vista was before service pack one was released. In the five months that we have been running Windows 7 at 9+ hours a day we have not received one error or stumbled across a bug.

Up until now we have been implementing Windows XP Professional on all of our networks and bypassing Vista. When Windows 7 is released our computer consulting services will be issuing the new operating system with the new computers. Windows 7 appears to be stable enough for our networks and also holds a speed that won't slow our clients down.

When we started doing computer network support as Port-to-Port Consulting in 1991, people didn't have much trouble figuring out the connection between our name and the PC on their desk. Sure, we've had a few troubled souls along the way who wanted to know if we were overseas shippers. We even had one poor man who hoped to rent portable toilets from us. Most, however, had no problem understanding that we were referring to all of those different ports on the back of your machine. As the PC has progressed, the number of ports on the back has gone down considerably. Today you can connect just about everything using only a USB port. So much for a cool business name!

About the only thing that is the same about our Indianapolis small business computer support company is the name. Our logo has changed several times. Nearly 100 people have worked here at one time or another. We've served more than 300 different businesses. And the IT industry has changed so much that we tell stories to our new staff members that sound like our grandparents stories of walking to school in the snow (uphill both ways).

My son turned 21 over the weekend. Thinking about how much he has changed thru the years made me start to think about how much other things have changed. One steady element of central Indiana computer outsourcing has been the people at Port-to-Port Consulting. While there are as many as 60 companies in the Indianapolis area that provide some subset of the services we provide, few of them have been around for more than a few years. Most are the result of recent layoffs. 

It does make me feel old to reminisce about the times we've spent working with Indianapolis small businesses on their Information Technology support. It also makes me proud of the incredible things we've done for our community thru our efforts to keep some of the most vital organizations in the area operating at peak efficiency.

So corporate America has a thing for Blackberries. They were the epitome of business professionals years ago and today people want one so they can seem more professional. Working in a computer consulting service has forced me to ponder why these phones still exist.

Unlike a majority of today's smartphones and handhelds, Blackberries can't even work on a Microsoft network by itself. Blackberries require software to be installed on a server to act as a nexus between the phone and the network. What's even better is that this is not even free. Each phone that connects with the software has to have a license to do so and that costs money. Not only is the software taking up more space and resources, but it's another piece of technology that IT support companies have to figure out and fix since there always seems to be something not working right.

Blackberries are also lagging in application support. Although they do have several applications, there are not many developers constantly designing apps for the Blackberry. The current number of applications for a Blackberry don't tally up to what Windows Mobile, Google Android or Apple's iPhone can offer. Many computer consulting services could tell you that the Blackberry craze is over and it's time for everyone to move past these phones.

When I was a child, I often heard adults say two conflicting things to me and it took until I was older to understand that they didn't necessarily conflict. The first came from coaches and other people whose job was to get me to strive for success. It is best expressed in this little ditty:


The other thought usually came from people who were driven to get lots of things done. It was captured in this much shorter missive:

Having these two ideas in mind at once is a testament to our capacity as human beings. Knowing which of the two to practice at any given moment may determine the gap between genius and dullard. While I found the two concepts confusing as I grew up, I see them both at work in my Indianapolis small business computer consulting company every day. The trick is really to determine whether you're in a situation where perfection is important or where completion is important. As I used to tell my network technicians back when we billed by the hour, "You reach a point where the solution is acceptable to the client. "At that point, you have to turn off the clock because you're working for yourself from then on."

The conflict between Good Enough and Better was a contributing factor in our decision, years ago, to change from the traditional time-and-materials billing model to our Pertingo^® Computer Support model instead. Now we can seek Better even when Good Enough would suffice for our customer. At the same time, we can give them Good Enough when time is the most important factor in the work.

About a year ago, my business partner joined an industry peer group: HTG. Both of us had been members of the Young Entrepreneur's Organization. His group disolved and mine defected. He decided to join HTG to get a different peer experience. In YEO, the commonality is business size and geography. Everyone is local but works in a non-competing industry. In HTG, everyone is geographically separated but works in the Computer Network Consulting industry.

Last week was the fourth quarterly meeting of Rob's group, and he wanted me to attend with him. I had a blast! I'm a fairly gregarious person. I like meeting new people and I believe everyone has something to teach me. It's that curiousity about people that makes my job of supporting the Information Technology of many Indianapolis small businesses appealing to me. I get to learn how businesses in different industries operate. But I digress. At the HTG meeting, the owners of 12 IT support services companies spent two days talking to each other about their businesses.

Two things struck me. We are on a par with the companies that are most professional in our industry, and none of us has found the silver bullet or secret sauce that will allow us to revolutionize small business computer outsourcing. Both were reassuring revelations. I appreciate the challenge of running my little Indianapolis Information Technology company. If there were a cookbook, I'd want to treat it like all the other instruction manuals I get.

As United Airlines recently found out, not taking care of customer complaints can come back to haunt you.  After a year of getting the run around from the airline's customer service department, Dave Carroll decided to utilize youtube.com in an attempt to get his guitar fixed.  And so the smash hit United Breaks Guitars was born, and now it's approaching 3 million views.

As a provider of Indianapolis small business computer support, I certainly took that message to heart.  It made me realize that customers are far more likely to tell their friends about their bad experiences than their good ones.  Being proactive about problems with computer network consulting leads to not only happier clients, but also less negative word of mouth advertising about our company.  Every company is going to drop the ball at some point.  What separates the great companies from the not-so-great ones is what they do after that.  While United has attempted to spin the publicity from this and has said they will use the video in their employee training, I bet they wish they had quietly remedied the situation at the beginning.

Many of my Indianapolis small business computer support customers ask me what additional things they can do to ensure their data security. They all have the expected firewall, anti-virus software, anti-phishing software, and password protection in place. Most have tightened their password policy to require more difficult passwords and periodic changes. So, when they ask what else they can do, my response is usually to tell them they need to train their staffs on the importance of information technology security.

I mentioned in a previous post that an incredibly large number of people in a random survey admitted to have visited pornographic sites while at work in the previous 30 days. Now a new survey reveals that about half of people say their corporate data security policies are largely ignored. Nearly half admitted to have shared their password with another employee or contractor, and twenty percent have turned off their anti-virus or firewall.

Add to that the increase in power of mobile devices and things get even scarier. How many of your staff members have a complete list of all of your corporate contacts in their cell phones? Do you even know for sure? What about those who transport corporate documents by copying them to a USB flash drive? Is anything ever encrypted?

Nothing your computer consultants do can prevent things like password sharing. We can create rules that prevent some of the other abuses, but in the end, you and your staff are the weakest link. If everyone in your organization doesn't follow the guidelines in your Acceptable Use and other Network Services policies (or if you don't even have them), your data and network resources will remain at risk.

In the end, if someone wants to get your corporate data specifically, you can't do much to prevent it. However, you should take the steps to ensure you've done the common things that prevent data loss or resource compromise. Your network consulting company can offer some guidance.

I often meet with prospective Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers who have internal IT staff. Usually it's just one person and that person came to the organization to do a different job and then morphed into the IT support person by virtue of their interest in computers. By the time I meet them, considerable time has passed since this arrangement got formalized and the business owner is wondering whether or not his internal person knows as much as everyone once believed. In truth, the wondering stopped a long time ago, probably when the owner heard a peer talking about a computer network capability that she uses routinely. The owner inquires about the mountains of time and money it must have taken to get that capability only to be told by nearly everyone else that the capability is commonplace in today's computer services.

When the owner got back to the office and asked his tech support person about it, he again hears how he's better off forgetting about that capability because it will take lots of time and money to implement it and then it won't work like he expects. That's when I get a call to discuss matters. Sure enough, the conversation gets around to that specific capability and, after I assure the owner that it is very possible, he screams, "I knew it!"

The next part of the conversation is difficult. I have to gently remind this prospective IT support services customer that he created the situation he's in by giving his network to a person who is unqualified to perform the job. I try to sugarcoat it with a monologue on the rapid rate at which technology changes and the great difficulty any one person must have trying to keep up with new features. And that's true. Not one of my computer systems consultants will pretend to know everything necessary to keep any but the smallest of computer networks running at peak efficiency. We rely on one another to make sure that happens. What the inside network support person has done is to limit the changes in the network so that he can continue to use the knowledge he gained in putting the network together for as long as possible.

That approach stiffles creativity. It throws water on any new idea for moving the business forward thru technology. It's a cost that doesn't get weighed when small business owners consider their computer network services options. You see, while most of my customers are in a relatively steady state with respect to their network, many of them are going thru a significant change. Because of this, it is rare that any one of our customers has to suffer thru being the first to have a particular new technical capability installed in their office. Where the inside guy gets only one chance to get it right, and fears the pressure involved, our network technicians get to do it all the time, and look forward to finding ways to do it better the next time.