Indianapolis Network Technician

While our goal in providing outsourced IT services to small businesses in central Indiana is to have computer networks that work all the time, it really doesn't happen that way in small business networks. In fact, it doesn't happen in large, fully redundant networks either. All of the major Internet services have had outages that made the news.

The difficult thing for my small business computer support team is to determine how to react when something goes wrong. I was reminded of this today when I went to check on the status of my car. A little over a week ago, I got into my car and found that I could not turn the key in the ignition. I've since come to learn that this is a common problem in Chrysler Crossfires (but not common enough for a recall). After a week waiting for a part, the shop tells me that they can't install it because they can't get the old part out since the key won't turn. Here's where we get into trouble as professionals. We define the problem too narrowly. These guys were trying to get the ignition lock out so they could replace it.

My problem was that I can't drive my car! When they take me into the shop to show me the situation, I see my entire steering column sitting on a bench. I ask, "Can't you just replace this whole piece?" The room fell silent and I could tell they were restraining the instinct to slap their foreheads. The replacement column is on the way.

The same thing happens when my computer help desk guys dive expertly into solving a problem that can be more easily solved if more broadly defined. "I can't print to that printer" doesn't mean we need to fix that printer. We have to get the person printing, then we can move on to fixing that printer.

Sometimes it pays to look at problems as a novice.

I noted recently that Apple's Mac OSX is considered one of the least secure operating systems on the market. Of course that's not what the Apple juggernaut or the army of Mac bigots tell us. They insist that the Mac OS is virtually virus proof. The dearth of native Mac viruses is driven by two forces unrelated to the actual security of the OS. First, there still aren't enough Macs out there to make it worth a hacker's effort. One would have to infect ALL of them to get the kind of notice that comes from infecting less than one percent of PCs out there.

The bigger reason is that Mac programmers have been trained to be well-behaved in their programming. If software developers followed the exploit avoidance techniques built into Windows, we'd have a lot fewer infections. In my Indianapolis small business computer support business, I don't think I have a single computer network that doesn't include at least one application that either subverts the Microsoft controls or requires the local user to have full administrator rights on the machine. Once that happens, viruses and other malware have only to perform the proper social engineering ("Click here to install the viewer.") to gain access to the computer.

Apple taught its developers to be more cooperative in writing their software, allowing for better control of rogue applications. This doesn't mean that it's not possible to infect a Mac. As soon as the number of Macs hits some critical market share (and it will), you'll start seeing virus attacks launched at them.

Still, whether you sit in front of a PC or a Mac, you have to be vigilent about what you agree to let your machine do or you're going to find yourself, eventually, having to clean off something nasty.

You've heard the old proverb that, "A man man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." The corrolary that, "You only need to have a lawyer because the other guy has one," is heard almost as often. Both statements contain an element of truth, and they show the difficulty of providing good consulting services to small businesses. Everybody thinks what professionals do is easy. Afterall, Denny Crane, and Matlock before him, and Perry Mason before him, showed how easy it is to be a courtroom attorney.

The IT support services industry has it even worse. Imagine how simple network support must be when 8 year old girls like Lex Murphy from Jurassic Park sits down at a screen and shouts, "It's a UNIX system, I know this!" Or when beautiful Angela Montenegro taps a few keys and creates a perfect 3D rendition of the victim's internal organs at the request of her boss, "Bones". Not to mention the incredibly easy way in which Garcia mines information from disparate databases on "Criminal Minds". It's no wonder that Indianapolis small business owners think computer network support should be simple and quick.

No we have the real-life 15 year old kid who disguises an iPhone app that allows the phone to be used as a data modem and gets it past all the screeners at the Apple Store. Surely the whole of business computer support must be simple in comparison! These examples don't just create misunderstanding among business leaders. Many people with very modest computer skills draw the same conclusion about how easy it must be to provide IT outsourcing services. They start selling their "skills" at below-market rates and before you know it some unfortunate small business is dead in the water because of incompetence.

The truth is that providing quality computer network consulting services requires a lot of skill and practice, along with an ongoing effort to stay educated about changes in the industry. Solving complex problems often takes time, even if the TV and movie stars make it look otherwise.

One of the scariest things I've seen in nearly 20 years providing IT support services to small businesses in Indianapolis, Carmel, Greenwood, Fishers, and other central Indiana communities has been the explosion of "Us vs Them" divisions of people. The Internet makes it possible for a person to hear only one viewpoint on a topic so that it gets reinforced and solidified in his mind. One of these splits that impacts computer network services is the Mac vs PC division. You're all familiar with the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" commercials that Apple used successfully recently. They played on a separation that was really meaningful a decade ago. The truth is that there is little difference between PC capabilities and those of the Mac any more.

And for those of you who say, "Yes but Macs don't get viruses," check out the latest research from security company Secunia. They found that in the first half of 2010, the Mac OS and the programs that run on it were the least secure, followed by Oracle and then Microsoft. The reason Macs don't get viruses is simply because there aren't enough Macs out there, relative to the number of PCs. One writes a virus to get widespread distribution. That's not possible if there aren't very many target systems to begin with.

When my Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers ask me about Mac vs PC, I tell them the decision is more one of aesthetics and cost than functionality. They don't believe me either.

Two recent events have me once again thinking about the role of a smart phone in the IT network of my central Indiana small business computer support customers. The first event was a stolen laptop. One of my IT support customers had her laptop taken from her house. She was able to use her iPhone to notify us that it had happened, which allowed us to secure her data. She was then able to continue to work, albeit in a limited fashion, until she can get back to the office and get a replacement. That was a great use of the technology.

The second event was when another of my Indianapolis computer consulting customers called to say he wants to replace his Palm Treo (That's right, he still carries a Treo). In his case, he didn't need anything more than his Treo had been providing. But he had to upgrade and he found the choices overwhelming.

These two experiences made me ponder the role of the smart phone. They show the spread of usefulness to some degree. For many, their phone is still a way to talk to others and to keep up with email and calendars. For others, it is a portable device for computing. The idea of placing a call with it is so low on the list of requirements that it doesn't play in the decision set (unless calls begin to drop, iPhone 4).

I met with a prospective new customer yesterday. This man is in charge of a good sized institution. They have not escaped the economic downturn of recent months and his board is pressuring him to squeeze as much out of the budget as he can without damaging the institution. He wanted to talk to me because he wasn't sure his internal guys were giving him the information he needed to make informed decisions about his computer network. He said, "They seem to be doing what it takes to keep their jobs."

This is something that I hear my Indianapolis small business computer support customers say all the time. They want us to give them the information they need to make informed decisions about their organization and its computer network services. Most of my competitors think about the Information Technology as if it were a separate entity from the rest of the organization. In fact, IT is nothing but a tool of the rest of the organization. If your comuter consulting company doesn't understand that, you should get rid of them right away.

When I talk with my customers, a very small part of the conversation is about computers. It's mostly about the business. What is happening that effects it? Where is it going in the future? Who can make things happen for it? When will critical decision points come along?

In the end, my IT support services customer has to make a business decision. My input is to provide a solid understanding of the business impact of the technology decision. Rarely does she have to make a "technology" decision. My technical input allows her to make an informed business decision.

We're pretty proud of our 19 year history at Port-to-Port Consulting. We've worked with hundreds of central Indiana small businesses and their Information Technology. In that time, even though we focus on small businesses, we've been a small part of 4 IPOs. In a state that has averaged less than 2 per year, it's notable. The other notable thing is that these companies outgrew our outsourced IT services before reaching their IPO decision. We really are a small business IT support services company.

With each of these companies, and many more, we've had to handle the transition to us from their previous network support provider. The handoff is critical to short term success. In most instances, we get thru it smoothly. On occasion, we get too comfortable with our success and find, like our men's and women's 4X100 relay teams in Beijing, that this little piece of the process can determine success or failure, no matter how fast the team is.

We were reminded of this a couple of time recently when customers told us that we didn't seem to be interested in solving a nagging problem for them, but instead were pointing them to another vendor. We thanked them for reminding us of our lapse, and got right to work bringing together all of the players needed to solve the problem.

Everyday, we deal with some kind of handoff between us and another service provider. Sometimes we forget that a bad handoff means we all lose. Thankfully, we have clients who remind us.

In the world of sports, it's common for competitors to prepare for a contest by studying video of their opponents previous performances. Peyton Manning is famous for reviewing game photos during the game. My favorite boxer of all time, Thomas "Hitman" Hearns used to find weaknesses in his opponents thru film, then test for those weaknesses early in a bout. He became the first fighter ever to win titles in four different weight divisions.

At Port-to-Port Consulting, we obsess with review of our performance. We know that we can only get better if we identify what needs to improve. We survey each of our customers after they have an interaction with our computer help desk to see what they think. We ask the Indianapolis small business owners who've hired us to tell us what they hear from their staffs about us during our frequent business reviews. We constantly debate about whether we're taking the best approach to the routine network support activities that we perform. All in the name of improvment. We understand that big improvements are made of little ones. Thomas Hearns once described the way in which an opponent "signaled" that he was about to throw a jab. He confirmed the signal was true, then proceeded to knock out his opponent the next time he threw that jab.

While we don't have the benefit of video, we do all we can to review and improve. When we find little signals that things aren't going as well as we think, we pay attention... before someone else does.

A recent announcement from AT&T indicates that they will begin limiting the amount of data that iPhone owners can consume from their network each month. The release doesn't give a timeframe, but it will likely coincide with the not-yet-announced release of the iPhone 4G that is expected by the end of this month.

While all of their claims are accurate in that less than 2 percent of iPhone owners will ever reach the limit on the larger of the plans, they have overlooked the psychological impact and created a wedge that will open Apple to move to other carriers sooner, which is good for us anyway. You see, the reason Americans don't want to tax the rich is because we aspire to one day be one of them. The same is true here. I don't use much data now, but I want to be able to when the day comes that I need to.

My contract with AT&T has run its course. My iPhone 3G is having sync issues. I am holding on for the 4G release. It can be on AT&T, or not. If an option with an unlimited data plan is available elsewhere, I'll go there. Who knows how much data I'll need next month.

As a provider of outsourced IT services to Indianapolis area small business owners, I'm often asked for my opinion of one technology gadget or another. For the most part, I try to keep an open mind toward new things. (Heck, I spent a year tweeting before I declared it to be a media created hype.) One of the things I've found in 19 years providing business computer support is that most of my peers don't keep an open mind for more than a clock cycle or two.

The IT industry is still in its infancy. The founders are just starting to be eligible to be called "greyheads." Afterall, the PC was introduced only 30 years ago. Throughout the PC era, the pace of change in PC and network services has been tremendous and ever-increasing. In order to keep up, those of us who provide IT support services have to be able to discern quickly whether a new technology has a hope of impacting our clients and customers. While we often make it sound like we've done extensive research on a topic, the extent of the investigation is often no more than reading a few posts on Digg or our preferred site for technobabble.

Again, I try to be more open than that. I tend not to share an opinion on a product that I haven't at least held in my hand, or tried out online. Once I get my hands on it though, it has a very small opportunity to amaze me before I'm ready to play with the next shiny object. I have enough technology junk to fill a small museum.

I say all of this to caution you when you seek computer network consulting. The expert giving you his opinion may not know any more than you about the subject at hand. See if you can get him to say he doesn't know about something, because he surely can't know about everything. Can he?

Today is National Lucky Penny Day. The Penny has been a very lucky coin, having managed to continue to get minted long after the cost of making one exceeded its value. The same holds true for a lot of the computer technology that some of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers have in operation. It's difficult sometimes to explain to one of my customers that providing life support to his old Information Technology is actually causing harm to his organization. When the only tray that will feed paper is the bypass tray that will only hold 25 sheets of paper, some highly paid people are spending valuable time jogging over to that printer to put more paper in every time they print. When it takes long enough for an application to open that the person can go into the kitchen and brew a pot of coffee while waiting, they are losing valuable work time (and consuming way too much caffeine).

Don't let your computer network become the same folly that our penny has become. It costs almost 2 cents to make a penny. You can't make that up in volume! Listen to your outsourced IT support provider when she tells you that the equipment is costing you money to keep. Avoid being "Penny wise and Pound foolish." Refresh your computer network before it completely dies. Life support is for people, not pennies or computers.

Many people have become so accustomed to sharing private data online thru social networking sites and the like that service providers are starting to take for granted that we are willing to share information that we really aren't. As the outsourced IT department for dozens of Indianapolis area small businesses, we sometimes have to stop and think about these same privacy issues with respect to the computer network services we provide. For example, my network support staff often needs to access a person's account. Many people think that we know (or have a way of viewing) their passwords so they are put off when we ask them to type it in. They think we're just  being lazy and not looking it up. In reality, your password is the last thing we want to know. It's your ensurance of privacy on your network.

Sure, we can change your password, but you'll notice that we did. We can also get access to much of your data using our administrative privleges. Nonetheless, we want to respect your privacy at every turn. We don't want to make a gaff like the launch of Google Buzz earlier this year. Google innocently pulled peoples' contact lists into Buzz in order to pre-populate it for them. They never stopped to think that people might not want to "Buzz" with those same people -- certainly not with all of them.

Data privacy is getting more difficult to define and manage, but good computer network consulting providers need to be extra mindfull of their practices.

I was a charter member of the Indiana YEO chapter. The organization gathers young business owners into small groups to work together on improving each other's business. Over the years, a lot of companies have been a part of the organization including several IT support services companies. Of course many have left along the way as well. My entire group defected at once because of some changes in the age restrictions on membership. We still meet independently but have no affiliation with EO (the new name of the international organization).

Recently, one of the original groups organized a reunion of some of the early members. While attending, one of the members came up to me and thanked me for sending him birthday wishes each year. In a decade I had not heard from him that he even received these messages, but I continued to send them because it takes a small effort.

His comment made me realize how important little pieces of information are for the success of many of my Indianapolis small business computer support customers. I also realized that it is the responsibility of computer network services businesses to manage all of that information and help our customers find it when they need it, and even when they don't know they need it. Years may go by without them noticing our efforts, but they have an impact any way.

We generally tell our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers that, "if it plugs into the wall, you should probably talk to us about it." The reason for that blanket statement is that while today's model of office electronics may have nothing to do with your computer network services, the new one you're about to buy likely will. Common examples are fax machines that morphed into fax servers; copiers that became network printers; and phone systems that provided unified messaging. We frequently learn of new devices that suddenly have network access and, like the modern copy machine, data storage capability. A recent CBS Evening News report demonstrates this importance.



Copy Machines, a Security Risk?

Clearly, data security is a brand new concept to copier companies, while protecting your data is a critical part of the computer network services we provide to our customers. Talk to your outsourced IT provider before you get rid of that copier (or anything else that plugs into the wall).

I had a sales call recently that was scheduled, at the prospective customer's request, at lunch time. When I arrived, they sneaked me into a conference room away from the main lobby. I was told that their guy was dating the receptionist and both were out at lunch so we had to hurry. Can you imagine being that afraid of one of your employees? Maybe you can. This isn't a new occurence for me. I often find that Indianapolis small businesses looking for outsourced IT support services are in a situation where they are afraid to tell their current provider that they're unhappy. This is even the case when their current provider is not an employee, but an outsourced computer support provider.

The number of humorous references made to the frightening help desk technician must mean there is some truth to the idea that people in companies have a fear that their computer network services provider can wield almost magical power over them. I suppose it's possible, but that's no way to run a railroad. If you keep your guy only because you're afraid of the damage he might do if you tried to fire him, then you should fire him right away. He's already done more damage than he should by creating that fear factor in your organization. He's empowering others to try bullying you in their respective areas as well.

All you need is a good, ethical business computer support company. They will be able to help you extricate this evil network support tech from your midst. Once you have accomplished the task, make sure that you don't end up in that situation again by requiring that everything about your system be documented in a manner that will be easy for you (or your next IT guy) to understand.

Port-to-Port Consulting has been providing outsourced IT support to Indianapolis area small businesses for almost 19 years. A lot has changed about computer services in that time, but one thing has remained constant: Your Information Technology is a primary source of chaos in your organization. You can't look away from your computer system without having it become a little obsolete. You have to spend time thinking about how obsolete you can let it get before you have to do something about it. That's what we do for our outsourced IT services customers. We help them survive thru the chaos.

Many in the computer consulting business thing that small business owners don't care about IT. I think just the opposite is true. They care about it too much. It's an area of their business that is critical to their success yet there is no way they can know enough to make an intelligent decision about it. This technical ignorance causes them to freeze like deer in the headlights and do nothing until they have no other choice.

Those of us who serve the network support needs of these businesses need to do all we can to make our customers IT-smart without them having to become IT experts. We can start by talking in business terms rather than IT terms. Even when our customers start the technical jargon, we've got to know it's the chaos that's making them do it. We have to help them navigate back to a place where they are more comfortable. From there, we must run the gauntlet to bring back a useful technology recommendation.

I got into the business computer support industry because the chaos attracts me. My customers have their own chaos to deal with. Together, we make successful business and IT decisions.

Our local business paper has a regular columnist who writes about small business technology. (They lock all of their content behind a subscriber login so you can't see what I mean.) I used to think he was an idiot because he was forever writing about Indianapolis Information Technology topics on which he seemed to know very little. The truth is that there is simply too much to know for one man to provide IT support services to even the smallest of businesses. When we started Port-to-Port Consulting in 1991 to provide small business computer support to organizations in Indianapolis, Carmel, Fishers, Greenwood, and Noblesville, my partner Bob and I were willing to make the claim that between the two of us we knew everything there was to know about running a small business computer network. We may even have been right.

Today, every single person at Port-to-Port learns something new and pertinent to providing good outsourced IT support that no one else in the company knew. We share, formally and informally, with one another all the time yet we still find new things every day. The thought makes me realize that Tim Altom is not an idiot. He is a new representation of what Bob and I used to call the "page ahead" guys. These were the computer consultants who would promise to come over tomorrow and do whatever it was that you asked of them. Then they'd go home tonight and read up on it so that when they showed up tomorrow, they seemed to know what they were talking about. In reality, they were only one page ahead of you in the manual.

When I started my Indianapolis Information Technology consulting business in 1991, we referred to our customers as "clients." Today, I think of the people that I work for as customers and the companies as clients. I believe that we treat customers better than anything else we choose to call them (patients, clients, constituents, visitors, etc.). This distinction between the small business entity to which we provide IT support services and the people who own and work in those organizations gets interesting from time to time.

The latest challenge comes in the form of private information in the age of social media. My clients, the Indianapolis, Greenwood, Carmel, Fishers, and Noblesville small businesses, want us to ensure the safety and security of their data and intellectual property. To do that we install systems to monitor and manage both incoming and outgoing electronic information. In many cases, we have the ability to see every word, image, and sound that moves in or out of our clients' offices via the Internet. We know where it came from and where it is going. We can essentially reconstruct what happened online days ago, kind of like an Internet Tivo. This ability is not generally monitored at that level by my network support staff. But we can in some cases if asked to do so.

With the emergence of Web 2.0 services, this seemingly simple process for managing the online presence of our client companies takes on a Big Brother feeling pretty quickly. Social Media has almost completely removed the line between you as an employee of a company and you as a human being living in Indiana. Services like Facebook and LinkedIn expect (in fact require) you to have a single account with your real name. If you use your LinkedIn account to keep track of your customers, prospects, and vendors while at the same time leaving yourself open to inquiries about job opportunities, then are you cheating on your current employer or enhancing his ability to succeed?

More importantly, what happens when you leave? The account was setup using your work email address, perhaps even at the request of your employer. But the network built in that account seems to belong to you more than the company. Who gets it? What is my role as the business computer support professional in facilitating that? Do I serve my client or my customer?

So far, these questions have come up mostly as hypothetical situations, but we have already dealt with a few real ones. Going forward there will be lots more. Given the strange way that Indiana courts interpret the laws, we think Indiana small business owners should start crafting agreements that define the rules of separation before they find themselves dealing with a private data issue between them and a departing employee.

This comic strip explains the difficulty small business owners have in finding a competent outsourced IT department. In the central Indiana communities of Carmel, Greenwood, Fishers, and Noblesville, my Indianapolis computer consulting company often runs into people like Henry. For whatever reason, they've decided that being a computer network services provider is much easier than their current occupations. Without delay, they run down to the local Kinko's and have a thousand business cards printed and start handing them out to friends.

Usually, the new Information Technology expert will find a problem or two that he can solve, which bolsters his confidence and makes him chase after more and more difficult challenges until, eventually, he really screws one up. At that point, he stalls until he can find a job in his previous career and gets out of the computer support business by throwing away the 950 leftover business cards.

Unfortunately he leaves behind a burned small business owner. He hired Henry because he was a nice guy he met at some Chamber function. Henry sounded like he knew what he was talking about when it comes to computers. He used a lot of technical jargon in the conversation. The business owner knew that his IT system had outgrown his internal ability to keep it running, much less to use it for strategic advantage. Since there's no industry regulation, he could only choose based on fuzzy factors or price. Henry fit the bill.

What's bad for that business owner, and for those of us who run professional outsourced IT departments, is that he will never again allow an outsider to work on his computer network if he can help it. When I meet owners who have had a "Henry experience," I try to console them for the bad experience. I don't try to win their business. Henry will have turned them into bad customers because they will never be able to trust another IT consultant. The "Henry experience" puts them at a permanent disadvantage. All I do is wish them well.

One of the more frequent activities of our computer help desk is to change passwords on various accounts. My network technicians often have to refuse to set passwords to specific things because they are far too simple to be meaningful. I’m not just talking about people who want to set their password to their birthdate, or anniversary, or home address, or even the names of their children or pets. At least a hacker would have to know something about the person, albeit information they can probably pick up on their Facebook page. No I’m talking about really simple stuff. And we’re not alone. An analysis of a recent data breach at web company RockYou revealed that a lot of people are unconcerned about security. Here are the top 10 passwords found in these accounts:

123456
12345
123456789
Password
iloveyou
princess
rockyou (the name of the site, remember)
1234567
12345678
Daniel

The other side of that is when my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers decide to make password requirements hard, or have frequent changes. This leads to post-it notes on everyone's desk with their latest passwords on them. As biometric technology gets better, we may be able to move away from the password. I relish the day.