Staff Training and Efficient Company Operations - Part III

I received several calls the past couple weeks from business owners and managers regarding my last article on E-Mail abuse in the December 2003 issue of Business Street.

Dec 21, 2003

Part 3 – Foundation stability!

By Greg Richburg, MCSE
Netricks, Inc.

Do you suffer production loss due to technical breakdown?
Is your technical breakdown due to system instability?
Is your system instability due to:
1. Employee negligence?
2. Hardware?
3. Software?

I received several calls the past couple weeks from business owners and managers regarding my last article on E-Mail abuse in the December 2003 issue of Business Street. People want information and guidance on how to tighten up security and stop problems from happening due to employee negligence and lack of understanding.

Whose fault is it if they haven’t been trained properly? Well let’s not even go there. A few simple lessons can prevent network calamity in that regard.

Equally as important, what I found out talking to these businesses is that there are loads of companies operating in potentially very disastrous network environments.

Let me ask you this. How old are your computers?

Come on people; get rid of Windows 98 already! (Not to mention 95.) Windows 98 was created over six years ago. Security is horrible; maintenance utilities hardly function, and if your computer is running it, then your system may be on its last leg.

For instance:

A hard drive is where the information on your system is located. Hard drives spin from 5400 RPMs to 15000 RPMs, depending on the quality. Your car engine doesn’t come close to that. Imagine if you ran your car at top speed for an average of eight hours a day for five years. Do you get my point? A computer that is five years old is a very old computer.

I am not here to promote any single operating system or solution. If you want to run Linux, Mac, Microsoft, or whatever, that is perfectly fine. Now if you complain about security and stability, and you are running on a network with Windows 95, 98 or even ME systems, I can tell you this; your setup needs to be addressed immediately.

To qualify:

I manage multiple networks around the San Joaquin Valley. It is my job to keep them up and running 24x7x365. Several clients of mine require a significant amount of security and stability. I give them that with proper configuration of the latest technologies and frequent system s. It is much more than “out with the old, in with the new.”

There is definitely a formula out there to create a winning network. True networks come in all shapes and sizes, yet the development principles to achieve security and stability hold throughout.

In my experience, if you repair an old system, you still have an old system. It may not have the capacity to maintain the level of performance necessary to stay productive with today’s software.

In this regard, computers are nothing like cars. Computers are operating enormously faster today then even last year at this time. Applications are getting much more detailed. And most importantly, company production is growing based on its technical abilities.

Frequent system crashes and poor system performance yields to low production. Our businesses today rely on technology, that’s a fact. How much production have you lost out of your employees due to technical failures?

Do the math and see how much it is costing you. With proper research, your solution may not be as costly as you think.

All past articles written by Greg Richburg are available at http://www.netricks.com/news. Please address article suggestions to: info@netricks.com.

Greg Richburg a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and the owner of Netricks, Inc. a network consulting, web design and hosting company located in Fresno, CA. Visit Netricks at http://www.netricks.com.