PRACTICAL TIPS FOR GROWING NETWORKS

Inventory Your Stuff

What you should not pay a tech to do.

 

Seamless is for Pantyhose

We rant and rave about not forcing technical language on people whose businesses are not technically oriented. We think it's dumb and counter-productive. We speak Business instead. Read on.

 

Watch Your Website!

How to know if your website is up---and when your browser is fooling you!

Clueless in Columbia

We get down and dirty on unscrupulous technical services providers.

 

Inventory Your Stuff

Disaster prevention planning is a legitimate way for IT consultants to earn a serious buck. To those of us who toil in the IT field, a lot of what is said is simple, common sense. You should not have to pay for that.

The less obvious aspects of disaster prevention involve protocol analyses, searching for open ports and a lot of other technical mine-digging. If there is an absolute guarantee that your security analyst will be able to explain it to you in business language you understand when the study is done, you should pay for that.

Let's get back to what everyone can do.

Inventory your computer hardware. List the serial number of every laptop, PDA, workstation, printer, scanner, speakers, new hard drive, whatever.in a corporate database. Record when you bought it, who sold or leased it to you, the manufacturer, and the version or model. It's handy to keep track of how much you spent on the item. In case a tornado does not devastate your business and you simply need to get your hardware repaired or updated, you will know exactly how to refer to your current frammis when you talk to your vendor about the next one.

Inventory your software. This means every serial number, every version, and on whose workstation the software is installed. This does not mean visiting every single workstation to discover who has downloaded free games from the Internet. You may invest in a server-based software inventory system that identifies software on workstations and organizes it for you. The time it takes to visit all your workstations may cost you more than simply purchasing a software inventory system that identifies software and versions.

Read your license agreements! Some software is licensed so that after a given date you will have to renew the license. Some software installs are very good at detecting any attempt to install a second copy elsewhere. Further information about compliance with the law related to software (and non-compliance could turn into a disaster!) is at http://www.bsa.org/usa/.

Update this list regularly and keep a copy offsite, along with your system backups. If a tornado does wipe your business out, you will have a current list to hand to your insurance adjuster. A simple spreadsheet will do.

The concept is simple. Get started. Now.

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Seamless is for Pantyhose

At Pequod Systems, we speak Business with our customers, not Tech. We help you plan your network. We don't do "strategic front-end planning" to "optimize" your "systems architecture." When we talk with you about building your network, we tell you what kind of network cable you will need to connect your computers, not the "infrastructure" to support your "configuration." If your computers or your applications are old, they are old, not "legacy."

"Handshaking" is what people meeting each other do, not how you get onto the Internet.
When we install a new application on your server, we don't "deploy" it and tell you how "seamless" the "operation" will be. "Seamless" is for pantyhose. When we connect your business with an Internet services provider, the words "DNS," and "name server" will not be used in our conversations with you – unless you bring them up. "Protocols" are for diplomats, not our discussions with you. When your workstations are slow, we will tell you how to make them work better (if they can), not how to "optimize" their "performance."

The people bringing in new business for you are your marketing and sales staff, not "salesgorillas" using a "CRM" application. The managers looking at the results of their efforts are managers, not "salestrackers." Of course, if you purchase our favorite Customer Relationship Manager application GoldMine, and your sales force uses laptops while visiting customers, you will quickly learn about "synchronizing" your data with their data. You will learn how best to use your applications, not how to "access" them or "optimize" your "operation" of "mission-critical solutions."

Seamless is for pantyhose.

Watch Your Website!

You paid good money to get your website up and running. But is it available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to your potential clients? Really?

Writing a check every month to your website services provider will not necessarily guarantee that your site is up. Of course, a reliable vendor will know when your site is down and get it up again before you notice it went down. Then there is that other kind of vendor. With this character, your site could be down for hours--or days. Prospects ready to put real money in your pocket enter your URL in their browser and discover the ugliness of your downed website. That prospect will be history---and you will never know it.

Some website owners use website monitoring services. Many of these will send you a free report telling you how long your website has been up---and send ads to buy additional services. Some say they will send you an alert within 15 minutes of an outage.

There is an alternative.

PING, a free utility on your Windows/INTEL computer, will help you find out if the computer on which your website lives is up and running. PING does NOT detect or guarantee that the website itself is up. To find out if your website is actually up, refresh your browser and enter its URL---after running PING. To run PING:

In Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows NT, click the START button. Click RUN. A dialog box opens. Type "CMD" in the dialog box. (In Windows 98, enter COMMAND in the dialog box.) Click OK. A black box opens up. Type in "PING WWW.[your <http://WWW.[your> website's name]" and press ENTER.

If the computer on which your website lives is up and running, a reply should come back saying something like "Pinging [your website's name]... with 32 bytes of data." After that, you should see some PING statistics.

However, if a message comes back saying "Request timed out," the computer on which the website lives might be down. Or perhaps your website has been deliberately set up not to respond to PING.

In either case, type "exit" and press ENTER. The black box disappears and you will return to your familiar computer screen.

Protect your investment. Know when your website is up or down.

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Clueless in Columbia?

You paid for them. Your network server, workstations, equipment and systems. Think you have administrative control over them? Think again.

Business owners routinely and innocently give away control of their technology to technical services providers. Then the relationship between them and that provider ends suddenly. The tech goes out of business. You, that business owner, could be left Clueless in Columbia. And you would have done it to yourself.

You probably paid a systems integrator to install a server, create user accounts on it, and connect workstations, printers and whatnot to it. You paid that tech to install a major piece of software on which your company depends. You paid to provide the security of a backup system, antivirus and firewall.

What will you do when your original systems integrator gets out of the business and leaves town without giving you a list of passwords and settings on your network? What will you do when you have to get service and support for your network? Add a new server to your growing network? Of course! You will call another systems integrator. The new technician will ask you for the master account name and password. Or other technical details. Do you have a list of these details? If you don’t, getting service from that second technician will be a lot more expensive and time-consuming than you had ever thought.

It’s not because the second tech is out to rip you off. It’s because the technician legitimately needs the information to do the job. And you did not get it.

Minimally, the systems integrator you paid to set up your network should give you a rather extensive list of network passwords and network settings. You personally may never use them, or even know how to use them. You should also have documentation of all the software and hardware on your network. Here is a minimum list of information you as a business owner should have available at all times.

• The user name and master account password for creating and deleting users on your network
  
• All user name/passwords needed for access to hardware devices such as routers.
  
• The user name/master password to access and run your backup system.
  
• The user name/master password to configure major software applications, especially if your company’s financial success depends on that application being up and running.
  
• Full contact information for every computer hardware vendor and every software vendor.
  
• The serial number for every piece of hardware and software installed by you or your systems integrator on your network.
  
• The version number of every piece of hardware and software on your network. This includes the operating systems as well as applications.
  
• The installation Product Key for software requiring one. This is not the same as a serial number.
  
• For Microsoft Open License products, the Open License Order Confirmation, which contains the authorization number, license agreement number, and end of maintenance coverage.
  
• Warrantee information
  
• A list of all your TCP/IP settings, whether you know what they mean or don’t. Examples include your public IP addresses, your LAN IP addresses, and the IP address of your gateway. Don’t be concerned if you do not know what these numbers are about. (They are not even remotely related to your street address.) Your next tech will probably need to know them.

There are other ways in which your technology services provider can control your access to what rightfully belongs to you. It’s frequently done in the guise of not overburdening you with “unnecessary detail.” In the end, it’s the way unscrupulous technical services providers control what rightfully belongs to you and with you. It’s the way they take away your freedom to choose a different provider if you decide to change the relationship. Choose a technical services provider that keeps you in the driver’s seat by handing you the keys. Then drive your business.

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