What Does Your IT Infrastructure Look Like?

Your IT infrastructure consists of all the technology that enables your organization to store and utilize data that it has collected. This includes your network, your storage system, and any hardware and software solutions that are used to access it. Basically, an IT infrastructure is effectively your organization’s central nervous system, supporting operations through the transportation of data.

It’s clear that your IT infrastructure will play an important role in the way your business works. This means that you’ll need to invest time and energy into developing a proper strategy for your IT infrastructure to adhere to.

Determining Your IT Infrastructure Strategy

The same infrastructure won’t work for all businesses, so you’ll have to craft one. To create an optimized infrastructure strategy, consider the following best practices.

Simplification

Make no mistake--your infrastructure today hardly resembles what it looked like just a few short years ago (at least, it shouldn’t). Chances are that your IT infrastructure contains several different types of technology. This complicates the process of improving and updating it.

Be sure to consider the modern standardization of the software and integrations that are possible with your centralized IT platform, as this will maximize access to data and increase how much value you get from your solutions.

Flexibility

IT is always changing and adapting to trends, which means that you will want to build your IT infrastructure in such a way that it can take advantage of these changes. Ask yourself where your organization’s biggest speed constraints are, as well as how they can be rectified. If you can consolidate your existing infrastructure to limit the risks, how would this affect your business processes? These are all factors that must be taken into consideration.

Service-Focused

The biggest advantage that IT provides for your organization is that operations can’t happen without it. When planning out your infrastructure, be sure to consider the fact that your entire business will need to use it for access to services and tools required for each employee’s day-to-day responsibilities. Ask yourself what you can do to make sure your infrastructure can do what must be done both now and in the future.

Why You Should Consider a Managed IT Infrastructure

You might recall the process you used to create your network back when your business was just a fledgling pushing back against the world. Remember that feeling and use it to fuel the process of reexamining your current IT infrastructure. In fact, you may find it more reasonable to outsource this task to a managed service provider.

There are many benefits to doing this, but the biggest has to come from the time you’ll save from doing so. You have a lot on your plate as a business owner. Can you say with confidence that you have the time it takes to design, build, manage, and maintain an IT infrastructure? Of course not--there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Instead, you hand this responsibility to professionals you trust to ensure that the process goes well.

Coleman Technologies wants to be the MSP you trust to make sure your infrastructure is working for your business and its goals. To learn more about the services we offer, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

What Are Biometrics?
Biometrics are a method of authentication that uses some sort of physical attribute or qualifier rather than a password or a key code. Some examples include fingerprints, voice patterns, typing rhythms, and so much more. They are easier to use than your typical passwords or key codes, and even better, they can be used in conjunction with traditional security measures and practices.

Let’s take a closer look at what some of these biometrics are, as well as the most practical way to implement them.

Biometric Types
There are two major categories for biometrics: physical identifiers and behavioral identifiers. Physical identifiers are by far the most common:

• Signatures: Signatures are one of the unique ways you can identify an individual, and you’ve surely seen this biometric used at least once somewhere or another. Whether it’s a transaction or an agreement, a signature can do much to guarantee someone’s authenticity.
• Fingerprints/Physiological Attributes: This particular biometric is often used to secure smartphones. Fingerprints can be used to determine the identity of the user, as well as various other physiological attributes, like palm scanning, retinal scanning, and facial recognition.
• Voice: Voice-based authentication is common all over the place these days, whether it’s a personal user issuing commands to a virtual assistant or a business using voice authentication to navigate automated answering systems.
• DNA: The technology to implement DNA sequencing into authentication is still a ways off, but it’s closer than you might think.

There are other behavioral identifiers that are used for biometric authentication. While these methods are still in development, here are a few examples of them:

• Typing Patterns: People all write in different ways, and the same goes for typing. Therefore, this can be used to determine the authenticity of the user based on their keystrokes and the pressure applied to the keys.
• Navigation and Engagement: In a similar fashion, the way that people navigate applications and systems can also determine identity. Mouse movements are quite showing, as well as how we hold devices.

Reliability (and Risks) of Biometrics
Biometrics are proving problematic to an extent, mostly because they can be inconsistent. Voices can vary depending on the user’s health or age, and faces can change based on a clean-shaven (or bearded) face, a haircut, or a pair of glasses. There are ways to work around this system, and with biometric authentication, there is much that needs to be taken into account.

Security is a Major Concern
This kind of data needs to be heavily protected, as it not only exposes sensitive information, but personal information as well. These kinds of credentials are also not easily changed, as they are heavily based on physical traits. For these reasons, biometrics may take some time to be adopted as the norm.

What are your thoughts on biometrics? Let us know in the comments.

Generally speaking, microchips in computers are made out of a variety of materials, but the most common is silicon. These microchips are responsible for acting as semiconductors and give your devices the ability to perform various tasks. We’ll get into the details about a couple of them here.

Memory
One of the more notable uses of microchips in devices includes temporarily storing data. These kinds of chips have a familiar name that you’ve probably heard before--Random Access Memory, or RAM. As long as the chip is receiving power, it can store data on the device. Once the device is turned off and the chips are no longer receiving power, this temporary data is wiped. Depending on what the device is used for, the computer might have many RAM chips installed on it; otherwise, the device will be slowed down considerably by resource-intensive tasks.

Microprocessors
Microprocessors have a lot to do with your device’s CPU, or central processing unit. You’ll often hear the comparison of a CPU to the brain of the human body. The CPU is responsible for processing all of the programmable commands on the device. Microprocessors generally rely on logic to function as intended. Of course, depending on the kind of device, various strength microprocessors will need to be used, as the same kind of microprocessor won’t work for every single kind of device out there.

Other Kinds of Chips
Depending on the device used, you might find various device-specific chips in use. For example, some devices that have cameras might have chips specifically designed for use with video recording or picture taking. Others that have networking abilities might have chips designed for use with those. Basically, chips are responsible for both the everyday functionality of your devices, as well as some of the specific, more advanced features that not everyone will be using.

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What Exactly Is a Legacy System?
A legacy computing system is a euphemism for an outdated computing system. Many organizations that have been in business for a while run into times when the technology they use is either multiple versions behind the current systems available or is simply not available for purchase any longer. Most legacy computing systems, while still having an immense amount of function for a singular company, create problems for migration to new hardware and new cloud environments, and most concerning, for data security.

It Isn’t Always So Simple to Upgrade
Upgrading from a legacy computing system is always going to be costly, but it doesn’t have to be as costly has you may think. Even though it is in the best interest of the business to upgrade to systems that better fit its current needs, moving forward on these upgrades creates a lot of anxiety, given the large costs involved. Beyond these costs, you have a myriad of variables to concern yourself with. These include:

• User productivity: Will the people tasked with using this system take to it quickly, or will there be some very obvious transitional problems? Additionally, will they accept the change? For example, if you’ve had employees using the same hardware and software systems for close to a decade, altering the entire construct, while in the best interests of the business, can sometimes have devastating effects on employee morale.
• Time investment: Typically, a major hardware refresh, or platform migration will come with substantial upfront (and often recurring) costs. That is expected; but, beyond the expected expenses, depending on the project, you may run into some downtime, a major problem for any company trying to migrate from an older IT system to something new.
• Employee dread: When making big investments into infrastructure or networking, some employees may begin to surmise that, once the new technology is implemented that the built-in automation possible with new technology will spell curtains for their jobs. Having an upfront and open dialogue with your staff can set the situation straight before any company-wide panic sets in.
• Committing to the new solution: As stated above, if you’ve gotten this far with the system you have, changing part of the way upstream may leave you only utilizing features that you are comfortable with, when new solutions present organizations with many, many more options to boost productivity and efficiency. If you are going to commit to spending the time and money in upgrading, be sure that you are ready to commit to the new solution.

How Creating a Dedicated Upgrade Strategy Helps
With what seems to be a never-ending list of issues popping up, you decide that abandoning legacy systems for more innovative solutions is in order. You can’t accomplish this by impulsively adding technology.

You need a plan.

In this case, the plan is called an upgrade strategy. It allows you to plan out the steps that you need to take to successfully move on from your old technology. Here is a short list of steps you will need to consider:

• Include your people: Anyone inside (or outside) of your organization that may have a stake in a major system refresh (whether it be hardware, cloud migration, or software) should be in the know. By understanding how the upgrade will affect them, they can prepare their workflow more effectively for the shift.
• Change control planning: What is going to change when the new system is in? If very little, managing the changeover will be simple, but if there are several aspects of your business are going to be altered by the upgrade, having someone in charge of facilitating and readying your staff for that change is a good idea.
• Manage the upgrade: Who is going to be doing the upgrading? Will there be downtime involved? How long will the project take? If it doesn’t take, is there a contingency plan in place? All these questions should be answered well in advance of any work commencing on your business’ computing infrastructure.
• Make sure your backup works: Your best bet is to back up your files, then back them up again. Losing data when trying to help your business isn’t good for anyone.
• Document everything: Not only should you document the upgrade process, you should document all workflow differences for every position touched by the new systems. This strategy provides transparency throughout your organization and assures a degree of continuity you’ll be glad to have if some element of the project goes wrong.

If you follow these six steps you should be in a pretty solid position to upgrade away from your legacy systems. The IT professionals at Coleman Technologies can make this process much simpler as we have the technology and the proficiency to properly get your systems upgraded, your data migrated, and your IT working the way you need it to be a benefit for your business. Call us today at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

There are several factors that contribute to the speed of a PC. Let's very briefly break these down:

CPU/Processor

The CPU handles all of calculations a computer performs. These days consumer-class CPUs handle billions and even trillions of instructions per second. While dated processors can greatly influence the actual speed of a computer, if your PC is fairly new (as in 1 or 2 years old, and possibly older for higher end builds) it's likely not bottlenecking your performance. Today, CPUs are equipped with two, four, or even more cores, which means the CPU can handle an more calculations exponentially and consume less electricity.

RAM/Memory

Random Access Memory is basically the short-term memory of your computer. While your computer is loading and running applications, they get stored in the RAM. The RAM is much faster than the hard drive, so your computer doesn't need to spin it's wheels looking for specific files and parts of applications. The more RAM you have, the more "stuff" that can be stored in it. The faster your RAM, the faster your computer can sift through the data that gets temporarily pushed into it. Once your RAM is full, your computer will depend on the hard drive to retrieve information, and that's where things get sluggish. Once you stop running a program, it will remove itself from the RAM to free up some space for everything else running.

Hard Drive

The hard drive is the storage device of a computer. For extremely high-end PCs, the hard drive is the bottleneck. Hard drives, when compared to RAM, are very slow to access and write information. Once your computer needs to rely on your hard drive heavily for RAM, things are going to start getting bogged down. While it's great that your PC can rely on your hard drive in this way for those times it needs some extra memory, it is likely this is the slowdown. Unfortunately, because hard drives are mechanical and have moving parts, there's limitations to how fast science can make them perform. There are costly solid-state drives, but as a performance-improving factor on a standard workstation, typically solid state drives aren't the cost-effective answer.

Of course, there are software factors as well. Malware and Spyware can bog down your system, and after a lot of use, temporary files can bog things down. Before upgrading hardware, you'll want to have a technician run a quick evaluation on your PC - it's possible a little cleanup can make all the difference in the world.

Otherwise, the next step is upgrading the RAM. RAM is usually relatively cheap, even to double or triple your existing RAM with faster, higher performance memory. Often the cost of the new RAM itself will be between $50 and $100, and more than likely less than that, and that's for a substantial increase, but it depends on your PC.

Is your computer running slow? Does it get bogged down by the time you have all of your day-to-day applications open? Contact us at (604) 513-9428 for a quick evaluation to see if a simple, cost-effective upgrade will help you perform your job more effectively.