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Archives for June 2014

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IT Support Guest Blog: Perfecting Network’s Performance

IT Support ClevelandIt is time for our monthly guest blog post from guest blogger, Brett Harney,  principal at Corporate Technologies Group in Hudson, Ohio.  Today Brett is sharing with the readers of our IT Support blog excerpts from his eBook, available for free download, on perfecting your network’s performance:

“Businesses are increasingly more aware of the quality of service issues that entail an application or website not performing well, and many have come to realize the impact network performance has on customer perception and their bottom line.

The figures are astounding:

    • For 25% of companies surveyed, an hour of downtime costs the business between $100,000 and $500,000.
    • Another 29% report the cost of downtime to be between $75,000 and $100,000.
    • One technology company estimated its cost “per downtime incident” at between $750,000 and $1,500,000, and was experiencing between ten and fifteen of these “incidents” per year.

Clearly, network and application performance has gone beyond being a quality issue—it has become a revenue impacting issue! These are obviously large scale issues for some very large companies, but being a smaller company with the same percentage losses doesn’t lessen the impact to the company’s surviving bottom line.

For this reason, we have compiled this eBook taken from our Perfecting Performance Blog, to discuss Network and Application Performance, and how right-sizing and network monitoring will increase your efficiency… and of course your bottom line.”


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Printer Repair: 4 Tips on Buying the Printer Your Office Needs

Printer repairSo your printer just broke down, and you’re tired of having it repaired. Or maybe it’s old, and you know it’s time for a new one.

You can buy a cheap one that just gets you by, or you can get the deluxe powerhouse version that prints 20-50 pages per minute. How do you know which one you really need?

Here are some tips for making that decision:

First Decision: Do You Need a Laser or Inkjet?
Laser printers print up to 50 pages per minute of black and white text. They work well for printing high-quality color pages as well. If you have at least a small office, you’ll want to consider purchasing a laser printer.

Inkjets are a more affordable way of printing and generally print around half the speed of laser printers. They’re great for very small offices that print 500 pages or less each week.

Do You Need an All-In-One or Single Function Printer?
If your whole office is just you and another person, and that’s all the bigger you want to get, an all-in-one printer will do the job. You’ll be able to print, scan, copy, and usually fax.
Single-function printers print only, and they’re generally much better at it than all-in-one printers. If you’re going to print at least a couple hundred pages per week, you should go with a single-function printer.

Should You Buy a Photo Printer?
If you’re going to print high-resolution images on a regular basis, you might want to consider purchasing one. If you only need to do this on an infrequent basis (once per month or less), you’re fine just going to the local drugstore.

Just know that if you purchase your own, they are pricey up-front and to maintain over the long haul. You’ll want to be an established business and have fairly consistent printing demands over the long haul if you’re going to buy one.

Do You Need a Business-Ready Printer?
If you run a very small business (2-4 employees or so), you’ll do just fine with an inexpensive all-in-one or single-function printer. However, if you plan on crossing that 500-page-per-week barrier, a business-ready printer makes more sense.

They vary widely based on what your business needs, and generally have all the features of all-in-one printers (print, scan, copy, and fax). However, they also have those essential business features like automatic duplexing (double-sided printing), and a feeder that lets you scan more than one page at a time. Their ink is generally designed to be fairly inexpensive, and they’re network-ready so everyone can print on them.

The inkjets are generally much cheaper, costing around $200 or so for a decent quality model. Laser printers can cost $1,000 or more.

Do You Need a New Printer?
If you’re experiencing printer problems and need an expensive printer repair, these are the considerations to keep in mind before purchasing your next one. You can go through the whole process yourself, or you can also let an outsourced IT solution do the work for you.  Great Lakes now sells both new and refurbished printers and toner. Fill out our form at the link below to get more info and be entered into a drawing for a $25 gift card.

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How Secure is that Coffee Shop Connection? A Data Security Discussion

Data SecurityWe have all done it.  Some time between meetings, stop at Starbucks and get some work done.  Check email while you are waiting for your flight at the airport.  Or even shelling out the $30 to connect on the plane during that cross country flight for a sales meeting to finish that presentation or send the contract after a successful sale on the way home.

And while the warning comes up that it is not a secure network and your data may be vulnerable, or even checking the box that we agree we won’t hold Panera responsible for any data theft while on their free wi-fi over lunch, we choose to take the risk for the convenience.

I recently read the article on Dell’s Tech Page One “How safe is your data while flying?” which got me thinking: People need to be made more aware of just how open their data is on public networks.

“That means credit card and personal information is vulnerable to phishing or even “spear phishing” attacks where thieves try to persuade you to hand over valuable information with a legitimate looking email.  (Companies should) use encryption on their devices, such as a free service like Tor, or a virtual private network (VPN), along with Electric Frontier’s HTTPS Everywhere. If you’re not using any type of encryption service like Tor or a VPN, your data can be stolen.”

Risk Analysis:  Data Security

At the very least, do a risk analysis for yourself.  Perhaps you don’t store a lot of sensitive, potentially valuable information on your laptop, or you don’t make purchases online when on a public network.  In that case, a strong antivirus and anti-malware program on your machine, coupled with smart internet use, will suffice for you.

But if your laptop houses sensitive company data, such as customer account information if you are a financial institution, then having that compromised over a public network can cause some serious issues for you and your company.  Deploying a company wide VPN strategy, with security and strong encryption tools in place, will be key.

Learn more about our Data Security Product Suite

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