Blog

Tornadoes Make Companies Think About Disaster Recovery

Thu, 10 May 2012 10:28:00 -0500

Like most things in life, only when coming face to face with impending disaster do businesses put focus on Disaster Recover and Business Continuity.

Over the last two years we have had extremely active tornado seasons and have brought the idea of disaster to many companies that really did not think disaster recovery right to their front door. Many had thought because the geographic location was not near the coast that they were relatively safe.

vAusTek gets social with Nimble 2.0

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:30:00 -0600

As a solution partner vAusTek it excited about the launch of Nimble 2.0! For those who are not familiar with Nimble you can check out our service page. Nimble brings the CRM into the modern era combining the social world with the CRM.

Speaking at World Entrepreneurs Network: Do it Yourself Technology

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:55:00 -0600

Clint Eschberger, founder of vAusTek, LLC, will be speaking at the World Entrepreneurs Network - Austin Chapter on January 26, 2012. We willbe presenting "Do it Yourself Technology" for small business.

Talent Connect Austin

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:46:00 -0500

As a sponsor and a volunteer I wanted to post about a great opportunity for Job Seekers around the Austin Texas area. This is a job fair with a twist put on by the Wilco Entrepreneur Network. They have over 150 positions for 20+ companies. It is a completely volunteer organization and with the economy it is a great cause.

Come check it out on Monday, October 3rd! Check more information and register at http://talentconnectaustin.info.

Office 365 falls a bit short for Small Business

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:00:00 -0500

When Microsoft announced that they were jumping into the Cloud Based office arena with Office 365 many were excited. Don’t get me wrong Google Apps is a very strong platform and works well for many organizations of all sizes. However there are many people who are just more comfortable at this time with Microsoft Office.

As many did I wanted to check it out and see how this might benefit the small and medium business organizations that I deal with. So I signed up for the beta and gave it a try.

vAusTek Launches Partner Portal

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:27:00 -0500

vAusTek, LLC has setup a new partner portal to handle our "Trusted Partner Program". Due to the nature of our business we work with other organizations that provide solutions that compliment our Virtual CIO and Consulting Solutions. We offer different levels of partnership including; Referral, Channel and Alliance.

We have set up our new partner portal at: http://partners.vaustek.com

To Policy or not to Policy the SMB IT

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:22:00 -0500

Lack of an IT policy can be costly to a business of any size!

Throughout the history of comparing large corporations and the SMB, Small and Medium Business, you have generally seen different methodologies for how the business is run, in large part due to budgetary reasons and the sheer difference in size.

Private beating Public Clouds

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:17:00 -0500

I was reading an article on Network World about a poll done with IT professionals and their preferences and plans for moving parts of their data centers to a share resource like the cloud. To be honest this does not really surprise me in any way. If you read my article on Cloud Recovery, you know that I feel that moving to the Cloud involves a lot of re-thinking and planning.

Think Twice: Cloud Recovery and Continuity

Thu, 19 May 2011 17:12:00 -0500

As with many “hot” technologies, many organizations got infatuated with the Cloud and quickly started moving everything over and thinking this is it, it is elastic, it can’t go down, and this is our production and disaster recovery all in one.

One problem, it did go down. At least for Amazon and their very public Cloud outage (link) and even with VMware’s not quite as public outage (link).

What is a virtual CIO

Wed, 04 May 2011 14:35:00 -0500

One of the most popular questions I get when talking to current or potential clients is, what is a vCIO (virtual CIO) and how does it differ from technical consulting. I can see where there is a confusion of the difference as there are similarities in the two.

Product Management Services Moved to New Site

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:42:00 -0500

Due to the growth of both our Virtual CIO consulting practice as well as the Product Management services we have decided to move the Product Management services to a new website ( http://vauspm.com ). The new Product Management site is going to be a work in progress for the next week, so please be patient.

vAusTek partners with Lithium Networks

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:28:00 -0500

vAusTek partners with Lithium Networks to provide a complete managed IT solution for Austin area organizations.

This is the first of what will be many announcements of strategic partnerships for vAusTek, LLC.

Entrepreneurs attend RISE sessions virtually!

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:25:00 -0600

RISE Austin through LifeSize, the Austin-based HD video conferencing pioneer, will be streaming some of the sessions. This is great for those entrepreneurs that have sessions at both end of town and/or can't make all the sessions.

Business Continuity: Can yours survive?

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:57:00 -0600

I was talking to a colleague the other day when the subject of disaster recovery came up. Like vAusTek he works with a lot of companies in this line of work and is amazed just how many do not have any business continuity / disaster recovery plan in place. We are not talking about just the small businesses, but businesses with $100 Million in revenue plus as well. It seems like most want it, but for some reason or another have never went past the idea of it.

Don’t place the finish line before the start

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:06:00 -0600

It seems like common since that before you reach the finish line, you must first get past the start let alone everything in between. Yet you see it all the time where organizations envision the finish line, but forget that they must first figure out where to start and then plan out the best route to actually make it there.

Microsoft offers cloud based Office 365

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:59:00 -0500

Microsoft may have been a bit slow to wake up to the threat that the Cloud and more importantly Google posed to their desktop based empire, but they are not holding back now. Microsoft has taken an “all-in” approach this year to Cloud being the future.

Office 365 is a re-branding of the previous Business Productivity Online Suite which offered businesses Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting, etc. for a low per user cost. The downside of Business Productivity Online Suite was the unlike Google Apps they had to have a full version of Microsoft Office to work with the Cloud offering. Now with Office 365 and the online office suite you can truly consider it a full Cloud based suite for businesses.

InnoTech Conference Austin

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:01:00 -0500

It is that time of year already. For those that don't know the InnoTech Conference is a conference focused on Business Information Technology. They have the normal exhibits, speakers, sessions, and much more focused on information technology.

They also have good informative sessions and awards for the area's top CIO's. It is a great place to network, see new technology and services, and most importantly learn.

vAusTek to offer Speaking Engagements

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:54:00 -0500

vAusTek is happy to announce that we are now offering Speaking Engagement services for conferences, user groups, technology fairs, team meetings, etc.

We have industry experience in both sides of Information Technology including IT Architecture, Systems Engineers, and Product Marketing. We have 1,000+ hours of speaking experience and are comfortable in front of System Administrators to C-level or Technical to Non-Technical.

Cloud Back Up an option for Small and Medium Business?

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:58:00 -0500

One of the most over looked areas in Small Business Information Systems is data backup and more importantly recovery.

For many it is a complete afterthought with no system in place what so ever. This is extremely dangerous as hard drives are one of the most common things to fail in a server. Not to mention many of the lower end servers have relatively weak redundancy if any at all when it comes to hard drives.

Others get a small storage system or tape backup onsite unit thinking that should be enough. Now while there is generally a small chance of something catastrophic happening to the location where it is houses, do you really want to risk something as critical as your business data?

Losing important business data can be a costly blow!

Let Salesmen sell and Trusted Advisors advise

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:00:00 -0500

Making the right decisions for your business is critical for the future. Making the right decisions on technology solutions for your business are no different. Technology is often the very infrastructure that supports your business not just a tool.

So why would you go to a salesman for advice?

Is there a need right now?

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:56:00 -0500

When looking at technology products over the last decade you see many big name products from vendors that fit a major need at the right time. VMware is a great example of hitting the market with a product that fit a big need, consolidation and slowing down server sprawl, at the right time. They were not the first to have virtualization, which can be traced back decades. However they were in the right place and the right time.

Decisions; First Server or Cloud / SaaS

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:47:00 -0500

I was reading a white paper about “when is it time for your business to get its first server?”

Now do not get me wrong there are very valid reasons to get a first server for even the smallest of businesses. Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS) and a number of open source alternatives generally setup fairly easily and provide sharing, communication (email, instant messaging), database, etc.

Forgetting something?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:12:00 -0500

Far too often when businesses budget for technology they forget the not so obvious, but critical pieces of the infrastructure. The obvious pieces like hardware, software, and maybe even some install services are put right into the budget. However maintenance, support, backup, and disaster recovery seem to be an afterthought. I have also seen many times where they did not even plan for power and cooling. Nothing like getting everything in, hooked up, and oops the power just overloaded.

Start-Ups, built on sand?

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:38:00 -0500

One of the mistakes that many start-ups make is they do not realize they are not building their business on solid ground. Why? Mainly because they do not have all of the information they need to see that the ground below is nothing but sand.

Ok, I will step away from the engineering ramble and put it more into start-up logic. When you are starting up a new business you are taught to make sure you have finances, competition information, marketing, etc. set up properly. While all of this is critical to your business, so is technology an area that often overlooked.

VMware Lowers Prices for SMB

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:56:00 -0500

VMware announce that with their new version of vSphere 4.1 they are lowering the price and adding the enhanced features live vMotion, which allows you to move a running server from one physical server to another.

Microsoft Clouding Things Up

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:35:00 -0500

Microsoft made sure that everyone knew their intentions of ruling the Cloud. They see serious threat that a Cloud infrastructure could bring to their business model. It was either jump on the bus or get left behind. Microsoft, as always, is not content to just get on the bus, they want to drive it.

There are a few things that came out of the way Microsoft entered the Cloud…

This will validate the capability of the Cloud as well as its longevity. Let’s face it, Microsoft may be a necessary evil to some, but they still have the ability to drive people to a technology and have ruled the data center for many years.
Microsoft just brought the Linux versus Windows platform to a whole new level. However in this game the Linux based platforms have a sizable lead.
Most important to Small and Medium Businesses, this will bring more innovation. Not just from Microsoft, but all of the other Cloud vendors whose primary purpose was to get their technology out. User friendly was not the primary goal. Although there are several systems that are.

I have mentioned the great benefits before of the Cloud (article) and how it can help businesses start up and keep up. Cloud is the future and it is here now. It is not for everyone and/or everything. There are still many things I would not put on the Cloud just yet. However it can no longer be ignored.

Looks like the future is Cloudy!

Cloud, The enabler for small business?

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:35:00 -0500

One of the hottest technologies around right now is Cloud computing. You think about how Google has been able to turn the tables on traditional office and email applications like Microsoft Office, Exchange, etc. Granted they are still just a small percentage you see the impact and realization from the giants that they are now changing their models to match.

Start-Ups: Please take advantage of modern technology

Fri, 07 May 2010 09:37:00 -0500

Traditionally when starting a business, one of the complexities and major cost was getting the technical infrastructure setup to support your type of business.

Kicking it off

Wed, 05 May 2010 20:35:00 -0500

Well this is the first official post on the blog. Nothing much at this time. We will be posting everything from ideas, best practices, events, news, and other information that pertains to what we do.

So the next question is probably, what does vAusTek do?