You might be thinking, “That surge protector that I bought in 1992 is doing a good job, nothings been zapped yet.” That may be true but let’s walk through what happens in the various power scenarios I described earlier. In the case of a lightning strike or other surge related incident the surge protector should do its job and protect the equipment. It does so by absorbing the energy, usually through components called metal oxide varistors (MOVs). These MOVs can fail if pushed beyond their intended ratings and also degrade over time as they stop surges and other overvoltage conditions over their lifetime. Eventually the surge strip becomes a power strip or an extension cord with more plugs and should be replaced. How can you tell if it needs to be replaced? Well if you can’t remember when you bought it and it is more than 5 years old, probably a good time to get a new one. If you can find the manual, that’s a great start, and sometimes the nicer ones come with indicator lights that tell you when it is time for a replacement. You can even search online and the manual might be on the manufacturer’s website.

Surge strips are definitely better than plugging directly into the wall. But electronic equipment, and especially computers, need more stable power input than what a surge strip can provide. This is where uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) are needed. A good UPS not only acts like a surge strip but it also gives connected equipment power in the event of a power failure through an internal battery. Nicer units also do power filtering as well. This supplies cleaner power, which helps to extend the life of electronic components. So, in a nutshell, a UPS helps with all the power conditions I mentioned at the beginning. So why don’t we all have UPSs if they are so great? I think most folks are just unaware of the need for one and after buying a $700 computer they say no to a $70 accessory that just seems like an unnecessary upsell when a $10 power strip seems to do the same thing.

Well, let’s see if we can’t change that perception. There are two basic types of UPSs, standby and line-interactive. A standby UPS supplies output voltage and usually doesn’t step in until there is a power failure or under voltage condition, at which time it switches to battery. Nicer standby units will also provide power filtering for cleaner power to all the components. Line interactive models  go a step further and provide power directly through the battery further isolating equipment from direct line voltage and providing consistent power as well as battery runtime in case of complete power loss. So which one do you need and why?

Which model really depends on a combination of price point, what you are trying to protect, and the uptime requirements for data stored on the protected system. Let’s start with price. Prices range, but most good standby units for the basic home/office setup go for $60 to $100. Line interactive units start at $120 and go up from there. What you are trying to protect is probably the most important question. Do you have a server, home desktop that your family uses to surf the web and check email, or a powerful office workstation that you do all your important business on? Each question has a unique answer based on the circumstances. But even knowing the answer to these questions doesn’t give us the whole picture. How long do we want to keep the equipment up in case of power failure (and what do we want to happen if this occurs) is the final answer to round out our solution pick. If your data is very important and you need round the clock access a beefy combination of UPSs, generators, and monitoring is your best bet. If it’s just your home PC a cheaper short runtime UPS in the $60 range would probably suffice. For your important office workstation a line interactive UPS with a longer runtime (so you can close your work and shutdown properly in the event of an extended power outage) is probably the better fit. Again the right questions and their answers lead us to the appropriate solution.

But why? Why do I need one? Why should I even care? Well if you have read this far you won’t be disappointed. The answer to why centers around one component of your computer system. And no, it has nothing to do with that 24 inch monitor. It does have everything to do with the hard drive. That component has all those pictures, music, and other precious stuff. Basic hard drives spin magnetic platters at high rpms and read the data on those platters with a read/write head that moves back and forth across the surface, but never actually touches the surface (it actually floats on the air that is moving from the spinning disk below). For those of you who have ever seen an old style record player the principals are very similar. There are two things that can happen when a computer gets unplugged suddenly or has an unexpected power outage. First the PC might not be able to finish a write operation to the hard drive possibly corrupting data. Secondly, the hard drive might not have enough time to spin down and park the read/write head which goes skipping across the face of the platter like a rock skipped on the water. This might cause actual physical damage to the platter, possibly resulting in data corruption. For those of you with solid state drives, you are still susceptible to the first event. Also, UPSs especially ones with power filtering, offer better long term protection and can help extend the life of other important components.

Who knew you could have a whole conversation on something like a lowly power strip. Of course, a UPS is just the beginning of any data protection plan and backing up your data should never be overlooked. Hopefully, this explanation underscores the importance of planning your power protection strategy. Hey, are you peeking under your desk yet?

If you have any questions or would like a consultation on your particular situation, please let us know.

Today’s threats that come over the Internet are getting more sophisticated, common, and a drain of your time and resources. From spyware and malware to viruses, spam, and phishing, there are fortunately various affordable solutions. Depending on your particular environment and security concerns, we can customize a security solution that meets your concerns and your budget. Solutions we offer normally include a combination of the following components:

• Endpoint Antivirus Software
• Network Firewall
• Anti-Spam (Cloud or Appliance based)
• Web Filtering (Cloud or Appliance based)

Whether you have a two computer office and just need some local PC based Antivirus software, or have a larger office and want centrally managed internet policies and management, we have a range of products that can fit your needs. Please call us for a network assessment today.

Tired of email data that’s glued to your computer? Would you like to share your calendar with others in the office and when you get home have webmail that shows the same set of contacts and emails that you have at the office? Well the enterprise features that used to be accessible only to those who purchased their own email server, are now available to any size business, no server required.

We offer the following platforms depending on client needs and required features:

• Microsoft Hosted Exchange Server 2007
• Google Apps consulting

Please contact a ZYFR representative to schedule a demonstration and review your particular business requirements.

Everything to do with technology these days has to be mobile or mobile accessible. This requirement has also shaped how we like to work and live. Mobile phones with emails, tablets with internet ready business applications, and laptops with corporate network access have opened the possibilities for what we consider an office. We now expect to be able to work from the coffee shop down the street, and don’t think twice about what we will do when we get to the airport, work is pretty much wherever we want it to be. As with any perfect scenario, not all businesses have made this switch to mobilizing their business processes. Allow us to help guide your business into the technologies that will make you and your employees mobile and more successful. From cloud based services to remote access software and hardware, let us custom tailor your company’s mobile solution.

Often overlooked, but very important, backing up data is a topic that tends to bring on the after Thanksgiving dinner snooze. The conversation used to lead down the path of tapes, drives, backup software, and rotation schedules. I can hear the moans already.

Well, today’s cloud driven backup solutions offer simpler and more cost effective methods of accomplishing the same task. This gives you, the end user, much needed peace of mind and reliability. ZYFR offers several backup solutions, all with a backend cloud storage component.

• Device direct to cloud
• Hybrid – Device to Local Appliance to Cloud

With no more tapes to swap and rotations to worry about, allow us to help you design a backup program that fits your needs. Call us today.

Enhance productivity, enable access, share documents…work with others…collaborate. Let us help you explore how todays tools can make your office more efficient and in touch.

From web-based tools like:

• Microsoft SharePoint
• Google Docs
• Drop Box
• and others…

To the mobile devices that support these platforms like:

• Laptops
• Netbooks
• Tablets
• Mobile phones

Call us today to get started with these exciting technologies.

Before we explore the ways that SaaS can be leveraged in a business setting, I think it is helpful to discuss how the new way is drastically different from the traditional way of using software applications.

The traditional software model basically boils down to the user finding an application they need and then going to that vendor and purchasing the license to use their product on their PC. This license and accompanying software is typically delivered on a CD or DVD. Upon delivery the end user would install the application on their computer. If they had multiple computers, the end user would purchase multiple licenses and install those licenses on multiple PCs. Depending on the software, the end user might also be required to install a server in order for the application on each PC to talk to a central data store, like a client database or company financial data. This client-server model eventually led to the purpose built network rooms and data centers found in many businesses today.

This setup used to be the only way to distribute applications because the bottleneck for the longest time has been high speed access to the Internet. But with the thousands of miles of fiber optic cabling that was laid during the tech boom, Internet networks and the end user bandwidth available now is much faster and finally large enough to handle delivering applications through the Internet.

So what does this mean for your business? If you currently have in house solutions, servers and software, in a network closet or data room, it allows you the option of a different software delivery model that offers cost savings and a better user experience. You are no longer required to purchase servers, provide this equipment power and maintenance with expensive IT personnel, and purchase software upgrades. Depending on the cost structure of the particular application, most Internet delivered applications charge a modest per user fee to access their service. The only thig required of the end user is to connect
through the web and start using the product. No server configuration, no hardware purchases and the lifetime of maintenance that goes along with it, no software to patch and eventually upgrade, nothing required of the end user except to use the product.

SaaS also gives smaller businesses, who before were unable to afford expensive software and hardware, the ability to use features of these formerly enterprise level softare packages to grow their companies and compete at a higher level. The next questions is how does one make the transition to SaaS? This question will be answered in the following post – “Making the transition.”

Don’t you love it when people use acronyms and forget to let you in on the what they are really talking about. I think behind the military, the computer industry is one of the key offenders in this area. So, before we launch into what the terms in the original question mean, lets at least define what the terms stand for.

SaaS, or Software as a Service, and cloud computing, the cloud being a symbol for the Internet, are key technologies that are revolutionizing the way people interact and use their computers and the Internet. If you haven’t noticed already, many of the
applications that people use on a daily basis are actually Internet based. These photo sites, social networking, and email applications are all programs that users interact with through a very familiar delivery mechanism, the web. This transition of more and more applications to the web, where the user no longer has to download and install local software on their PCs, is the basic idea behind cloud computing and application delivery know as software as a service.

You may be asking yourself, I see this happening to the applications that I use personally, but how does this technology translate into something I can leverage within my business? This question will be the subject of a more indepth answer in the following post – “In House v. The Cloud”.