Subscribe
  • Home
  • /
  • Storage
  • /
  • Five ways businesses are struggling with technology

Five ways businesses are struggling with technology


Johannesburg, 15 Oct 2018

Don't let technology get to you. It could be used to enhance your business. With daunting technology concerns, how can you deal with the concerns to enhance your business?

The following article looks at five of the most common concerns that we have come across in our 15 years of IT experience.

Different versions of software

Do you experience an absolute nightmare in understanding the differences between versions of software? Does it make you want to pull your hair out when having to choose Office, and the choice isn't clear?

When you get Office 2016 Home and Business, Office 2016 Pro Plus, Office 2016 Student, and throw Office 365 (and the various versions of that) into the mix, how do you identify which one is right for you? When you don't have a large IT budget, purchasing this software can be daunting without the advice from an internal IT department or a costly outsourced IT company.

The first step in identifying what software version is necessary is to understand what you are using your Office for. The simplest way to do this is to identify which Office applications you will need.

The table explains the different apps and usage, please click here to view.

Identifying and understanding the specs of a device purchase

There comes a time when you need to throw away your beloved Granma Betsie, which is covered with duct tape and tea and coffee stains.

But, with technology specs increasing yearly, how do you replace beloved Betsie with your increased requirements? You can't always trust the computer salesman: the primary concern is likely commission.

Determine your requirements by the following three categories:

* Beginner: A beginner would require basic use, such as receive, send e-mail and access and browse the Internet, watch Netflix, and type out the occasional Word document. If you are a beginner, a decent machine to look at is the Intel Core i3 series, with the accompanying 4GB Ram and 500GB to 1TB hard drive.
* Intermediate: The intermediate user would do all of the above, but also use it for business use. The additional power would be put to use for large Excel spreadsheets, basic design, and having multiple documents open at the same time, with Outlook running in the background. If you are an intermediate user, a decent machine to look at is the Intel Core i5 series, with the accompanying 8GB Ram and a 1TB hard drive.
* Advanced: The advanced user would do all of the above, but go the extra mile. Your gamers, your video editors, AutoDesk users and Adobe users. You are likely looking for a beast as you are in a specific technical field that requires all the power in the world. If this is you, you are looking for a machine that can perform and even outperform: a minimum spec machine would be the Intel Core i7/i9 series, with at least 16GB Ram, and an SSD+ hard drive with a minimum of 2TB.

HDD space management

Running out of hard drive space can be a real pain in the USB port. Especially since it happens so often!

There are only so many times one can go through a hard drive and take a full day to identify what can be deleted. At some point, a limit is reached, and your data is your data and can't be removed.

One way to mitigate this is to purchase an external hard drive for additional storage, which is bound to be knocked about and become old Betsie's best friend, unreliable uncle Ernie, within a month.

Another option is to upgrade your internal hard drive. This is a better option to uncle Ernie, but you are restricted by hardware failure, in the form of acts of God, theft, or plain old coffee-and-the-keyboard.

Constantly upgrading is not ideal in an unpredictable and constantly exponentially digital world.

The ultimate solution would be online cloud storage. This option doesn't require expensive hardware investments. It is likely secure and maintained by well-equipped tech professionals, depending on service provider. It grows, easily and quickly to your business's needs. And, most importantly, it is affordable.

Cloud storage corruptions

When you get to the perfect solution of online cloud storage, a new villain arrives. As mentioned, not all service providers of cloud storage are secure. If you are relying on cloud storage to host your data, and you are with a questionable storage provider, your data could be at risk.

If your local data is infiltrated with malicious software such as ransomware or a virus, the infiltration will replicate to your online cloud storage file once copied.

Additionally, if you are editing a file directly from your online storage, you risk corrupting the file. These corruptions can happen due to shoddy Internet connections and hardware/software malfunctions.

Choosing the right online storage provider

This ultimately leads us to the last battle. Choosing the perfect online storage provider will allow you to mitigate the risks of file corruptions.

A general rule I use, is the 3-2-1 data storage rule.

Data is the capital, and protecting it with the 3-2-1 date storage rule might seem like overkill to you, until your data capital is lost or in jeopardy. Think payroll and accounting data. Think family photos that are the forever memories that cannot be replaced. Think valuable customer information. Think databases.

How can the 3-2-1 data storage rule save you? The principle assures that you have three data sets or three copies of your data, stored on two media options, and one backup off-site.

When choosing an online storage provider, does its system make use of the 3-2-1 rule. In many cases, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, your data is not sufficiently protected according to the 3-2-1 rule. There is no replication on these systems. In the event that a corruption of data occurs, there is also no backup of the data.

Thus, when you are taking control of your data, and implementing the 3-2-1 rule, by having a physical copy of data on a hard drive, and your backup option is an online service provider, you are somewhat safe. But if you have copied over data as a backup, and the data was corrupted on your hard drive, you have a problem.

Having an online storage system that implements the 3-2-1 rule on the data through security and shadow copying allows for your system to be sufficiently safeguarded against data loss.

And with shameless punt, the perfect online storage and backup provider is Backup Berry. Backup Berry's 3-2-1 rule: your data is stored as you are currently using it, with a second copy on a local or external hard drive that you select via the Backup Berry software, and the last copy is saved on the Backup Berry data servers. The data that is replicated from your data location and stored on our servers includes versioning. This means you have your very own time machine to go back and select a different saved version of the file/document that you were working on. It is also an extremely secure option with built-in ransomware protection and continuous scanning of malicious code. Another awesome feature of Backup Berry is that it acts like your favourite online storage sharing, by providing a direct shareable link. And last, but definitely not least, it won't break the bank; we take affordability seriously.

Conclusion

All businesses have certain challenges to overcome when it comes to technology. Remember that technology is there to make your life easier. Technological tools can be used for efficiency, stability, organisation, and bottom-line, profitability. With a little bit of education and know-how, these tools can take your business to the next level.

Share

Editorial contacts

Tash Bhairo
Backup Berry
Tash@randtechit.co.za