Five Tested Ways to Improve Your Vendor Relationships

March 24, 2017 Callum Huddlestone

MSPs may provide IT cloud services of all kinds to other businesses, but they too often obtain hardware and related products from third party vendors. In order for MSPs to be successful, it is imperative that they nurture their vendor relationships, and strive for improvement, whenever possible.

The following are some of the best ways MSPs can improve their vendor relationships:

First Things First – Select the Vendor Carefully

It goes without saying that choosing the right vendor is extremely important for a long lasting and healthy business relationship. Many MSPs focus too much on the pricing a vendor is offering, and make a selection on that basis. However, a vendor who is providing the best prices may not be the best vendor for you, especially, in the long run. Thus, you must take into account several other important factors, such as their expertise, terms and conditions, years of experience, customer support standard, etc. Finding and going through the reviews left by other MSPs on the Internet can also help you making the best decision.

Paying Bills on Time

Profits and sales are at the core of every business. Thus, one of the best ways you can ensure you have a good relationship with your vendor is by paying your bills on time, without fail. Vendors often have to work on thin margins, and with a fluctuating cashflow managing the inventories can be a challenge for them. By paying your bills on time you can make it a lot easier for them to stay in business, and also bolster the relationship.

Making Your Vision and Goals Clear

This is one of the things you must do first thing when you partner with a vendor. In fact, explaining them what you need exactly, and how you need it, is one of the best ways to find out if they are the right fit. If they understand your short-term and long-term goals, and reflect the same in the service, then they are perfect for you, without a doubt. Just keep them updated with where your business is headed, and you will have a lasting and bonding relationship with them.

Keeping Your Calm When Things Go Wrong

We don’t live in a perfect world, and things go wrong. Your vendor could delay a delivery, or maybe send damaged products that you needed urgently. Issues like these may make you want to call them up right away and just give an earful. However, this can never be the best approach. Before you jump to conclusions, it is better to hear out their side first. It is rare when a vendor causes a problem on purpose. By keeping your calm, you can understand their perspective and prevent your business relationship from taking a blow.

Helping Them Out

Going an extra mile doesn’t hurt to nurture your vendor relationships. For instance, you can offer your IT expertise to solve your vendor’s problems, if needed. Or you could also refer them to your other IT partners, who are looking for a reliable vendor themselves. You will be surprised how small gestures like these can go a long way.

Should You Use Cloud-Based Phone Systems?

March 23, 2017 Callum Huddlestone

The traditional, on-premise phone systems are being replaced by equipment-free, cloud based phone systems. The reasons are simple. Traditional phone systems come with many limitations. They are expensive, difficult to scale up or down, and can’t be reconfigured easily. As a result, a large number of businesses have started using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) systems instead. Not only VoIP systems are easy to install and maintain, but can also be integrated with existing business services easily.

Since cloud services are becoming more and more popular — as businesses have started moving their existing services to cloud servers — it is natural to wonder whether you should consider moving to VoIP system. Cloud services are in demand for a reason — they allow you to focus on the critical aspects of your business, and leave technicalities to an expert, who specializes in the field. Apart from reduced upfront expenses, and equipment maintenance costs, using cloud based VoIP services can offer many benefits. These are:

Full Control Over Communication

A cloud-based phone system is easily customizable, and allows you to switch the features on or off on the go. Scaling both up and down is always a breeze. New users can be added or removed on the fly. Cloud service also makes it possible for the employees to access it from anywhere they might be, using their smartphone, laptop, or even a desk phone.

Premium Business Features

One of the major advantages of using cloud-based VoIP service is that even small businesses can enjoy top line business features that are usually available only for large corporations, at affordable rates. Examples include call centre solutions, virtual assistant, queues, conference calls, auto attendant, etc.

Maximum Uptime

Cloud service providers take all kinds of measures to ensure that their systems are prepared for data breaches and disasters. They also monitor the systems 24/7. As long as you have a stable network with good dedicated VoIP bandwidth in the system, it is rare for the service to go down. For the most part, you get to enjoy seamless phone communication with your clients.

Conclusion

In today’s digital world, where both business and social interaction is done via emails, instant messages, website and blog content, the significance of phones has not diminished. Important matters are still discussed on the phone. Thus, if the phone service is down for even an hour, it can cost a tremendous loss, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of the potential customers who couldn’t connect. On-premise, traditional system is as good as the network infrastructure constructs. However, IT admins have the the ability to control all of its variables. Because of this, they might be reluctant to switch to the VoIP system. Keep in mind that VoIP is affordable, easy to scale, and gives a peace of mind that your phone communication is secure and is supported by experts in the field.

Using “SMART” Goals to Evaluate your Website – Part II

March 22, 2017 Kris Price

In Part I, we discussed how to evaluate the success of your website using the SMART technique. In this series, we will further discuss the principles of SMART when measuring your marketing goals.

If a website doesn’t get traffic, then it will eventually get out of business. Growing your traffic will require you to create some kind of performance targets.

SEO

A website that is not found when Googled is bound to fail. This means, you must invest in SEOs. Keywords can be found from other high ranking competitive websites. SEO is not a one-time job, rather, you must continue to work on you SEO at all times.

Subscriber

Once visitors find your website, your goal is for a quick conversion if possible or at least for them to come back again. This an be accomplished by creating a subscriber list. List building is much easier if the signup page is placed at a visible location with in the website, and an incentive is given to the visitor to opt-in.

Inbound Link Building

Inbound link building definitely helps you to be SMART. Backlinks boost your SEO and increase traffic while creating great brand awareness. Achieving a huge number of backlinks might be very challenging, but if you put your efforts, you will be able to succeed.

Content Publishing

Search engines love fresh contents as do humans. Even though it might take up to 90 days or more for search engines to fully index your website, publishing high-quality contents and blogs on a regular basis will bring huge benefits. In addition to blogs, you can also publish some additional contents like ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, and surveys.

Measuring Your Marketing Goals

Not everything needs to be measured. In fact, collecting all kinds of information might lead to complications when you evaluate the results. Having said that, here are some of the key metrics that you can focus on:

Total Visits: The total number of website visits is a direct representation of how well it’s performing.

Page Views: Page views help you understand which specific pages of your website are more popular than others.

Unique Visitors: Repeat visitors are not half as contributing to your business as the unique visitors. After all, every unique visitor is a potential customer.

Traffic Sources: It is important to check where most of your traffic is coming from. Are your visitors using desktops or smartphones? Where are they based in? These factors can help you in improving the marketing campaign.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is defined by the number of visitors that leave your website almost instantly. If you observe a high bounce rate, then you may want to check your website to see what’s causing it.

Backup Technology Limited (BTL) is always available to help its partners and resellers with their marketing needs. Please contact BTL at https://www.backup-technolo gy.com/about-btl/contact

Using “SMART” Goals to Evaluate your Website – Part I

March 22, 2017 Kris Price

So, you have set up a beautiful website that has powerful and informative content for your prospects and other relevant visitors. You have added contact forms, explained your services clearly, and added important links. This should do just fine, right? Unfortunately, the answer is “no”.

Your marketing efforts must not stop at merely creating and hosting a quality website. The Internet is a big platform where a number of IT companies are vying for the same spot that you are after. Thus, traffic gets distributed unevenly, and if you want more of that to reach your website, then you must establish concrete IT marketing goals, and measure them for evaluation.

An ideal website for an IT business must have SMART goals, which are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

Creating the SMART goals

With SMART goals you can cover all the major aspects of your marketing campaign, and make sure you are on the right track.

Specific

Goals that are vague have no value. Thus, if your marketing team needs to focus on creating a “good” website, and drive “excellent” results, then you must revise the entire strategy altogether. “Good” results don’t mean anything. Even if you want “good results”, you must be able to put it into numbers that define how “good” it is. Will you consider a 1,000 unique visitors per day good? Or do you need higher numbers to qualify as “good”.

Measurable

Borrowing the previous example, you must be able to measure your goals. This allows you to track your progress, and take actions accordingly. So, if it was your goal to convert at least 10 leads per week through your website forms, and if you are getting 5-6 leads conversions, you can make adjustments in your marketing campaign for improvement.

Attainable

It goes without saying that the marketing goals that you have set must be realistic and attainable. Goals that are not practical will not only waste time and resources, but also hurt the morale of the marketing team.

Relevant

A lot of thought and planning must go into creating the goals so that the team’s efforts are not in vain. For example, while a huge amount of brochure downloads might be good for business, but if the majority of these downloads are through bots, then you might need to revise the assets you have uploaded for downloads.

Timely

Each goal must have a fixed timeline. It doesn’t matter if a goal is to be attained within a month, a year, or more, a deadline is a must. This helps in keeping your team focused, and also increases the overall productivity.

To be continued in Part II.

Do You Really Need an Antivirus Software Today?

March 21, 2017 Sam Broadbent

There was a time when viruses and malware were a major threat, even for an average desktop or laptop user. This was the time of Windows XP, which didn’t have an AV program of its own (later Windows OS came with built-in AV programs, such as, Windows Defender in Windows 7 and 8), and the operating system itself wasn’t exactly robust and secure enough to ward off the unwanted programs.

Times have changed now. Not only there is a considerable decline in major virus and malware floating around, but the operating systems, too have evolved greatly to tackle this problem. Brian Dye from Symantec (a leading provider of security products) himself declared in 2014 that antivirus was dead. This surprised, and even shocked a number of people, even though Dye was referring to the declining sales of AV products.

The reason why sales of AV programs have declined is because the majority of businesses have moved beyond traditional software protection. They now invest in comprehensive AV systems rather than standalone products and focus on adaptive approaches instead. Of course, another reason is that most computer users are unaware of the benefits that paid AV programs offered, and are content with their free versions.

Today, a huge percentage of computer users don’t use AV programs anymore. But what about businesses? Do they need an AV program? Perhaps not.

How Microsoft Affected the AV Market

For a long time, AV companies such as Norton and Avast made tons of money selling their security products. Everyone was afraid of viruses, which was why they would buy an AV program the first time they bought a new system. However, when Microsoft released Windows 7, which had many features, but mainly the built-in security program Windows Defender, it gave the commercial security companies a run for their money. After all, it was a great product, and did a terrific job, for free! Who would want to pay for another AV product, when this one came pre-installed, and cost nothing?

After the release of Windows 7, a lot of AV companies started rolling out free versions or trial versions of their products to increase sales, but the damage was already done.

Malware Bringing Ransomware

While virus attacks have declined, it won’t be correct to say that computer systems don’t have any security risks. Yes, trojans and malicious programs are rare these days, but these have been replaced by other forms of programs, mainly the adware and ransomware. These programs don’t directly harm the system, but increase the system’s overhead, and pose the risks of fraudulent activities (ransomware).

What’s the Solution?

You can absolutely protect your computer system from harmful programs without shelling out money. The first thing you must do is make sure that Windows Defender and Firewall are both enabled. These two will protect the system from the majority of the attacks. Secondly, install a basic version of a malware protection software, or AV software, just to be sure.

The suggestions above are for desktops and laptops. They can’t protect your server, which is why you need a good online backup solution. Even if you have an expensive AV program, it is best to invest in a decent cloud backup solution. This is because no AV solution is foolproof, and you wouldn’t want your important documents and files to be compromised. Before you make your final decision to pick a cloud backup and data storage company, make sure they are offering additional services, such as: data mobility, data security, disaster recovery, virtualization, business continuity, and more.

Influencing the Quality of Services by Focusing on Service Level Agreements

March 20, 2017 Callum Huddlestone

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are enterprise life lines on the Internet. CIOs cannot plead ignorance of the clauses. First, the SLA is often written in plain English, and second, the SLA represents the “consensus” reached between the contracting parties. A focus on the SLA is an imperative; a necessity. So, what does one look for in an SLA?

This paper purports to help readers focus on SLAs for Cloud services and understand the what, why and how of it.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Definition of Services
Performance Measurements
Problem Management
Customer Duties – Roles and Responsibilities
Warranties and Remedies
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Security
Termination of Agreement
Conclusion

Introduction

CIOs can not plead ignorance of the clauses in the SLA if enterprise data suddenly vanishes into cyberspace! SLAs are often set out in plain English and a focus on the SLA is an imperative; a necessity for the survival of the organization in this digital age. A focus on the SLA, an understanding of the provisions and sections of the document is a must.

Service level agreements are formal, legally binding documents that are drawn up by the contracting parties. They formally set out the level of service that will be provided by the contractor under the terms of the contract. All Cloud services providers include SLAs that detail the level of service that will be provided for the duration of the contract.

A service level agreement is an “agreement”. It signifies consensus between the contracting parties. It assumes that there is a common understanding about services, guarantees and warranties, responsibilities and priorities. It defines levels of serviceability, availability, operation, performance or other attributes of the service, including billing. It details where and when a customer can expect “minimum” service and how it can be measured or what the target value is.

A few contracts may even contain clauses detailing penalties for failure to meet minimum expected levels of service. To get the right level of service, customers must examine the different sections of the service level agreement in detail.

At a minimum, a typical Cloud service level agreement includes the following sections:

Definition of services
Performance Measurements
Problem Management
Customer Duties
Warranties
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Termination of Agreement

Definition of Services

Cloud Service SLAs, like all utility service SLAs are output based. By this, we mean that the level of service that will be provided to the customer is defined in measurable terms. The service provider demonstrates value to the customer by expounding how knowledge, capability, and ingenuity are innovatively organized to deliver the requisite output or service to the customer. This emphasis on the delivery mechanism shifts the risk to the service provider.

The definition of services under the SLA may vary according to the type of service, the type of organization and the needs of the organization. A corporate level SLA may provide generic services to all parts of the enterprise. Multi-level SLAs may split services so that the service provider can cater to the specific service needs of different parts of the organization. Customer level SLAs may provision for services relevant to a particular industry. Service level SLAs may cover specific service requirements of specific service groups.

SLAs may offer layered services. The service provider may define the basic package(s), that will be made available at different prices. Customers can select from a list of “add-ons” (at pre-defined costs) or other specific features that they would like to include in their package. For instance, the basic package may offer the customer 2 GB of space for storage. The customer may choose to “add-on” additional storage by signing up for 20GB of space. The service user may also opt for an email system for the entire organization in addition to the other services being offered as part of the regular package.

All terminology proposed to be used in the SLA are also set out and explained in this section of the document.

Performance Measures

That which is not monitored is not done. SLAs are drawn up to ensure that Cloud service delivery performance can be measured and the customer has the ability to monitor the performance of the service provider on the basis of a pre-defined set of standards and norms. The service provider also commits to a minimum level of service under this section of the SLA and has the opportunity to define the standards and norms that are to be used to evaluate the performance of the service delivery. For instance, “latency” is a term that describes the time taken for data to be recovered to the client machine from the storage server in the Cloud. “Uptime” is a measure that helps both the customer and the service provider understand whether the services are being delivered as promised. Uptime is usually expressed in 9s. As a client, one needs to think thoroughly on the level of uptime. Uptime can be incorporated with much accuracy by determining the number of 9s in the SLA. For example, the table below shows the co-relation between the number of 9s a client might target and the duration of downtime, which may vary from 5 minutes to over 36 days in a given year.

If your availability target is a mere 90%, there will be 36.5 days of downtime in a year (i.e. 10% of 365 days). If, however, your availability target is 99.999% (dubbed as five nines), then you will only have about 5 minutes of downtime in the entire year!

Availability Target	Downtime Per Year (Approx.)
90 percent	36.5 days
99 percent	3.65 days
99.9 percent	8.8 hours
99.99 percent	52.6 minutes
99.999 percent	5.3 minutes

Table: Comparison of Downtime Vs Availability Target, using “one to five nines”

Problem Management

This section of the SLA focuses attention on problem-handling systems integrated into the service. The purpose is to minimize the impact of events, incidents, and problems on the customer’s business. For instance, the Cloud vendor may provision for alerts to be generated whenever a backup or recovery fails or unauthorized entities attempt to access the data. The SLA may detail error handling procedures and set out escalation protocols for handling unexpected problems. Time frames for the resolution may be specified. Stipulations may include activation of audit trails and maintenance of logs and records for all types of incidents that may cause failures in delivery of service.

Customer Duties – Roles and Responsibilities

The SLA is not a one-way street. The Cloud vendor has some expectations from customers. The service will work effectively only if the organization collaborates regularly with the vendor for technical and support contract issues. The organization must clearly indicate and designate the license administrator. The administrator is responsible for receiving and administrating the software product licenses, updates and upgrades and payment of all bills due or assigning rights and permissions to other users, who are authorized to access the online storage account. Though they may appoint secondary administrators in multi-level contracts, all secondary administrators must report to the primary administrator, who must remain a single point of contact for the Cloud vendor.

Warranties and Remedies

The Cloud vendor provides the user details of any warranties and remedies under this section of the SLA. This is perhaps one of the most important sections for the customer. The warranties may cover service quality, indemnities, third party claims, remedies for breaches, exclusions and force majeure.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Recovery is the raison d’etre for online Cloud backup and storage. The Cloud vendor describes in this section, the disaster management protocols that have been put in place by the company to safeguard against disaster.

The disaster recovery and business continuity guarantees may broadly include:

Provisioning of geographically dispersed servers for safeguarding against natural disasters such as Tsunamis, earthquakes or tornados
Continuous data replication or data mirroring to ensure high availability of information at all times
Seamless failover systems
Simultaneous creation of local copies of data using the Cloud vendor’s proprietary application even as data is being streamed to the online server over the Internet
Provisioning for bare-metal restores to any part of the world
Provisioning for data security with impregnable cryptographic modules, both during transmission and storage

Security

This section of the SLA elaborates upon the security systems that the Cloud vendor promises to use. Any certifications obtained by the company for its cryptographic module or the type of encryption that is used (bank grade/military grade) is generally specified here. The encryption protocol may be used only for data in transition and not in storage or for both. If the vendor permits the customization of the encryption key, the fact will find a mention here with suitable warnings that the loss of the key could well mean the loss of data as the vendor does not retain copies of the customized keys.

Further, the vendor urges the customer to ensure that the user management systems provided is exploited to ensure that only authenticated and authorized personnel has access to data and enterprise policies are being adequately implemented through the interface settings.

Termination of the Agreement

The last section naturally talks of when and how the contract can be terminated. The rights and responsibilities of the vendor and the customer are generally detailed in this section. Termination can occur at the end of the initial term, for convenience, and/or for a cause. However, whatever the type of termination, the vendor must undertake to delete all customer information from all primary and secondary servers in which the data has been stored. Some vendors even specify what they will do with the information that is stored by them in their archives and disaster recovery sites. Wherever interoperability of services is possible, the vendor may agree to transfer all customer data and applications to the new Cloud service provider.

Conclusion

It must be reiterated that the SLA is a binding legal document. Both parties to the contract can enforce it and hence, it must be drawn up after both parties are satisfied that they have clarity on promises and expectations. Imperfect understanding on any side can lead to confusion, dissatisfaction and probable loss of business. Therefore, both parties must negotiate the different clauses before signing on the dotted lines and committing themselves to the contract.

In some cases, despite your due diligence, SLAs might not be met; and you won’t discover this until the unexpected happens and disaster strikes. Therefore, it is highly advisable that you understand and get comfortable with the SLA and that you anticipate disasters and plan accordingly. Sometimes, disasters are not fully understood; and administrators might define them vaguely. For instance, disasters that are defined as small instances may have just as big of an impact as the larger, less likely ones.