Last week I was speaking about the jungle that is now the business technology industry, in today's business world, I come across so much technology, I can only describe the market as an absolute jungle ...
Some companies are bringing in the right specialists to enhance their sales teams, but what is also required are technical experts to make sure that the products that are on offer from a reseller or vendor, match your business requirements at the right value for money. Remember, being cheap in a business sense means cutting corners and that can be dangerous to your livelihood, especially in today's cyber-centric world.
I want to quantify my views on the current world of cyber security software. The rise of cybercrime has led to a massive surge in tech companies scrambling for your attention and money to implement their solution over and above their rivals!
Every vendor makes similar, if not the same, claims as to how their company can protect the data that you hold, how their AI laden servers can protect your business from incoming email nasties and now, how, when sending emails, they protect you brand identity by checking that only your company is sending out from your domain and that messages are not being spoofed and sent out from a hacker's server.
There are also many, many over-the-top services such as a plethora of independent server companies to back-up Office 365 applications, just in case the mammoth that is Microsoft suddenly crashes and you can't get to your documents in the usual way.
Sounds confusing? Well, it is, even for me, except I have the insider experience, which most businesses don't have and are fully reliant on outsourced technology service providers. Almost every service is subscription-based and your monthly costs can easily spiral out of control on products and services that are not beneficial for your business and leave less money for essential technology that can enhance your productivity and actually increase your revenue by way of efficiency.
Another area of confusion is 'The Cloud'. Personally, I am not a fan of this terminology and don't use it if I can help it. When looking to move services from your in-house server to an outsourced application data centre (not quite the same as a standard data centre and I will explain that next time), we have to get out an old-fashioned calculator.
Just as a basic example, one client was going to be charged about £20k per annum to move all their email services to Azure, Microsoft's subscription-based application data centre service. Five years would be a service subscription is £100K!
Only essential services were to be backed up online and some non-essential services were to be saved to a high capacity NAS unit. The key is for industry professionals to understand your business and work for you, rather than just doing what may be the 'easiest' for them, as is often the case.
If in doubt, find an independent specialist who has been in tech since caveman times.
If you feel inspired to find out more then do call me on 07555 807700 or leave a comment below and I'll be in touch as soon as I can.