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By · CommentsCIOs Need To Benchmark IT According to Business Impact
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For years CIOs would look at me as if I had two heads when I asked them, “What would it take to turn your IT department into a profit center?”
They looked at me that way because times were good, profits were flowing and the funds – and staffing – was readily available to test new projects with or without clearly defined objectives and metrics to verify both the validity and ROI of the “pet project of the month.”
Then along comes a financial meltdown and 10.2% unemployment and suddenly not only are pet projects being cut but so are the needed enhancements to improve the viability and survivability of a firm’s IT, telephony and storage infrastructure.
This has forced CIOs to take a step back and answer some tough questions – and provide real numbers and a firm business case – as to how their department, their staff and their projects meet the overall growth and profit goals of their company.
According to Gartner, the IT agenda of firms both small and large will be dominated by virtualization, business intelligence and social media.
Additionally, we have seen and will continue to see, a shift from CapEx to OpEx spending for the next year as companies attempt to stretch their budgets by stretching their hardware while the economy is still working through the malaise. This shift to OpEx is made more viable as “cloud computing” becomes more reliable and vibrant. When computing in the cloud the emphasis is shifted from the hardware on the client side to the connectivtiy and bandwidth, which are both less expensive and able their costs are able to be distributed across all users.
However, literally millions of servers are beyond their scheduled replacement dates, which will increase the failure rate and potential for lost data and productivity of firms nationwide. And that could be the silver bullet in your budget planning arsenal when it comes to requesting increased funding for both CapEx and OpEx for your IT department.
Meantime between failure rates can be calculated and when multiplied by the number of servers, average length of outage and proft per employee per hour you have your business impact the CFO and CEO will want to see to justify spending money on IT.
For help in calculating those numbers or in extending the life of your current equipment, please contact us for a free consultation.
Windows 7 PC Upgrade Performance Checklist
By · CommentsSo you’re seeing the new Windows 7 commercials and you’re thinking it has to be much better than Vista but you’re concerned about your current machine running too slowly after you upgrade, which would defeat the purpose of upgrading, right?
Quite often I see PC users simply throw the latest operating system on their machines without confirming the minimum specifications needed to run the OS and they end up wasting their time, their money, their old machine, possibly consulting dollars and hours with my team only to end up downgrading their old machine and buying a new one with the latest OS and used piece of software they use as a coaster for their coffee!
So before you rush out the the store or Amazon.com or Newegg.com to buy the new Windows 7 upgrade let’s look at a few steps to make sure you don’t enter “frustration-ville” before lunch!
The good news is that Windows has announced some extremely low requirements from a hardware perspective so you should be good to go but let’s take a peek.
Current Hardware:
If your current PC does not have these minimum specs you (a) have a relic, not a PC, and (b) need to either upgrade the hardware or just break down and buy a new machine.
1) CPU – Must be 1 Gigahertz (1GHz) or faster. Most systems in use in a (profitable) corporate environment will meet this requirement.
To confirm go to the Windows Start menu, then “My Computer” and right click on it, select “Properties” and on the bottom of the page that pops up look towards the bottom to see your Processor Speed.
2) Memory – Must have at least 1GB (1 gigabyte) of RAM. Follow the same steps as above to see how much memory your system has.
3) Disk Space – 16GB of hard disk space. Go to the start menu, scroll to my computer, then click on my computer and then go to local disk. Right click on it and select properties. This will then tell you how much free space there is on your hard drive.
4) Graphics Card – Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface).
5) A DVD-R/W drive. The amount of code built into current Operating Systems is staggering and they usually only fit on DVD’s so make sure you have access to a DVD for your PC.
What if your current PC does not meet these requirements? While I’ll give you a few pointers below, your best bet is to go buy a new machine!)
- CPU – If your CPU is too slow it’s usually not worth the money and hassle to upgrade it. Sorry.
- Memory – Memory is pretty easy and affordable to upgrade and does not need any special tools but make sure you check for compatibility with your manufacturer.
- Disk Space – You can attempt to free up space by deleting old files, etc. but 16 Gigs is a lot of data to dump. Here are some steps to take to free up some space but if your disk is full you should really consider buying a larger hard drive for your system or even an external, portable drive to take around with you for emergencies.
To clean up your system you can:
- Do a little Spring cleaning by deleting old programs, files, games (at work?), pictures and movies (big space eaters). You’ll be amazed at how much you can delete once you really start snooping around your system.
- Run the Windows Disk Cleanup to delete all the temporary files that Windows does not need but they clog up your system.
- Registry errors – This can get tricky. This can be a biggie but there are free registry scanning programs you can run before you upgrade to Windows 7. You can then fix the detected errors and delete any junk entries.
If you can do all of the above you should have good luck with the Windows 7 upgrade.
If you run into problems you can always contact us for a free consultation.
Prevent Windows Problems When Upgrading to Windows 7
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San Rafael Business Computer Support
To upgrade or “upgrade?”
Let’s say you have an office full of rather savvy PC users with systems that are 1.5 to 2 years old. Your laptops and desktops probably came with Vista but you probably downgraded them all to XP. These machines are probably running Intel Dual Core processors with at least 2 GB of RAM.
Now October 22 arrives and you’re faced with the thought of “upgrading” to Windows 7, Microsoft’s cover-up of Vista.
I put “upgrading” in quotes because upgrading usually means putting in a disk, keeping what you have without erasing your drive and starting over, and 45 minutes to 2 hours later you have an upgraded system.
For the majority of Windows 7 installations, though, you’re going to have to do a “Fresh Install.” With the proliferation and experience of most corporate users in the realm of cloud computing, SANs and NASs an disaster recover, this does not pose that big of a problem, but it can be a headache if not managed properly. At the end of the day, though, most Windows users will be familiar with fresh installs.
Personally, I typically do a fresh install on my Windows machines because it is faster than uninstalling all of the “crapware” that manufacturers have been bribed into cramming onto my shiny new PC. (We also recommended to almost all of our clients to stay with XP because Vista didn’t offer a large enough risk/reward return to tolerate the hassles.)
Now that Microsoft has licked its wounds and mostly recovered we see that Windows 7 isn’t all that bad and if you bought your machines after June 26, 2009 you are eligible for a free upgrade.
Keep in mind that with an upgrade you have to go with the bit version of Vista your system had. For example, if you had a 32-bit Vista OS you can only get a free upgrade to 32-bit Windows 7. The same holds true for the 64-bit Vista OS.
Likewise, the version of Windows 7 you may upgrade to for free also depends on the version of Vista your system has. So PCs with Vista Home Premium can upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium. PCs with Vista Business get to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional and machines with Vista Ultimate go to Windows 7 Ultimate.
Downer Announcement
If you have Vista Home Basic or Windows XP on your PC it is not upgradeable to Windows 7, which means you’re not eligible for a free upgrade.
The good news is that you can install Windows 7 on Vista Home Basic or Windows XP-equipped PCs, but you must do a clean install (versus an upgrade). This requires the purchase of a shrink-wrapped copy of the Windows 7 OS. You should also verifythat your system meets the minimum requirements for loading the new OS.
As with any upgrade, we highly recommend/beg/insist/stomp our feet and slam our fists that you back up your files and settings. You can use DVDs, external hard drives or attached storage but BACK YOUR STUFF UP before you do any type of upgrade. If you don’t have the time or expertise to make this happen please call us because we do. (A little shameless plug!)
