Having worked in many different technical environments I've come to realize that there are four major flavors of how computer support is typically done which depends on where the computer is. Residential, SOHO or small business, medium size business, and large business (enterprise.)
Residential Computer Repair
A residential computer owner with one or two computers will typically not do computer maintenance. Like a car with no oil change, things go badly at some point. It's inevitable. They end up losing data they need, often work information, the family is yelling, and while they can get the computer repaired somewhere, it costs more than it should with some basic low cost maintenance and they never get back to the state they were before the failure, losing data permanently.
Small Business Computer Repair
A small business computer owner with less than 25 computers will typically buy a support contract from them hardware supplier and will have some business contacts who also do computer support they met through the Chamber of Commerce. They will often not have a written plan on what to do if they lost an important computer system or service, nor will they have a process to fix it, so they will muddle through it when it fails. Their business contacts for technical support will come through eventually but since it is an adhoc support service, the small business owner will not be a priority to help over the customers that have normal support contracts. A small business computer owner will usually but not always have anti-virus software, will usually not run Windows Update or apply systems patches. They will usually backup some data, but not enough to get themselves all the way back to 100% functionality quickly.
Medium Business Computer Repair
A medium size business with less than 500 computers will typically buy hardware support contracts and will have a small team of technical support professionals doing reactive troubleshooting and system restoration as well as technical project work. They will probably do some preventive computer maintenance on mission critical systems, but not on all their systems or desktops. They will probably have some web services hosted through a third party data center for maximum service up time.
Enterprise Business Computer Repair
A large business will often have thousands of computers and large teams of professional technology support. They will have master service agreements from the largest OEM technology companies. They will have systems deployed that do constant maintenance on their primary systems and will have locked down their non critical systems to the point that it is difficult to damage them by accident. They will have a plethora of business and technical monitoring systems to tell them everything is ok. They will normally have hardware data centers in various places. They will almost certainly have a master Disaster Recovery Plan that documents their most important business systems and processes and how to recover them in time of a failure.
Computer Maintenance - What Works
The reason large businesses spend oodles of money tuning, fixing, and monitoring their systems is money. They know through bitter experience and internal case studies that any downtime costs them more money than no downtime. So they work to minimize it as much as possible through a series of easy to implement technical steps which ironically can be done by the smallest business as well.
Computer Maintenance - Disaster Recovery Plan
You don't need to own a Wall Street brokerage to do this one and it is the number one most important thing you can do for your business hands down. A disaster recovery plan is among the easiest things for a small business computer owner to accomplish and requires minimal technical knowledge. It consists of identifying the business process steps you need to stay in business, take in money, send out product, etc. When you know what those processes are, you then can find the technical systems that you depend on as part of them and figure out what you would need to restore them if you lost those technical systems. The hard part in that is the business processes, getting them all on paper and it can easily be done by a company officer in concert with someone from sales, purchasing, accounting, etc. Once you document the process you can bring in a technical specialist to help you document what that means from a technology perspective and implement a solution or guide you on the steps to do it yourself. Often the solution is just knowing where the important data is kept and how you can back it up and restore it without risking it.
Ironically its even easier for a home computer owner since your needs are typically less complex. Your family will typically have a few common sets of information they need. Family photos, documents, video, music, etc. Figure out what it is one weekend then make sure it gets backed up. You could have a small NAS at your house which is what we do, or maybe you use an off site backup service. Either way works fine.
Computer Maintenance - Anti-Virus & Malware Prevention Software
Experiencing a virus on your computer system is devastating. Often they thrash through all your files, your privacy gets compromised, and quite often your machine gets hijacked to do some other task. Bot nets are real, they can be dangerous for your system, and they are easy to prevent. Anti virus software gets you part of the way there.
Virus prevention software is cheap, often less than $30 a year. You can either install it manually yourself or even use an anti virus managed service from a provider like Mad River Systems. For a nominal monthly cost we install anti virus software on a client system remotely and manage it for them remotely. Regardless of how you choose to do it this is a must have step now. Don't skimp on it. Protect every system you have with anti virus software.
Computer Maintenance - Windows Updates
After 10 years of being hammered by everyone Microsoft has gotten pretty good at the automation and deployment of system updates. Keeping your computers current is among the most effective ways to protect yourself from downtime. In corporate environments I have seen enterprises go offline by one virus infection and the only computers that continued to run were the ones that were patched. Word to the wise, take care of this. Your two basic options are too configure it to run automatically at a particular time every day or night on every machine or to use a managed service provider like Mad River Systems to do it for you remotely. Much like the anti virus solution, for a nominal fee we can manage this for you so it does not disrupt your business without having to come into your business.
Computer Maintenance - System Tuneups
Lets face it from time to time you have to bring your car into the dealer or the shop to check things out even if nothing is broken. They take care of small maintenance problems before they turn into big problems, and generally let you know if there is anything wrong or about to go wrong. Computers are no different.
There are numerous indicators on a computer system on how it is performing. Honestly checking them manually can be a chore. But it is possible to do by yourself. If not you can opt for a managed service provider like Mad River Systems who can do it for you remotely.
Patrick Cannon is the owner of MadRiverSystems.com based in Southington, CT. They provide computer repair southington [http://madriversystems.com] and to the surrouding cities and towns in Connecticut as well as being a managed service provider [http://madriversystems.com] nationwide offering desktop, laptop, server, and infrastructure support.
Copyright 2009
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