BrightWire Networks Blog

The whole point of making a budget is to control costs. All it takes is one surprise to undo all the careful work of budget planning. No department is immune to unplanned expenses, and while it's impossible to totally prevent budget-busting expenses across the board, you can take action to turn many surprise expenses into controllable costs.

Many businesses are migrating their computing needs over to the cloud. In a worldwide survey, Gartner found that 60% of businesses have increased their budgets for cloud services through 2014. Yet, cloud computing may not be right for every business. For companies that would like cloud services, but may have cloud anxiety, going with a private cloud is a valid option.

When it comes to computer memory, redundancy is a good thing. The more places that you have your data backed up to, the better off you will be if something happens to your hard drive. RAID is a common hard drive formatting procedure that improves server performance and protects your data in the event of a crash.

Every business needs to backup their data. If your company is hit with a disaster, and there is no backup in place, then it will be a critical hit to your operation. Backing up data with tape is a widely used solution, and while this is better than nothing, it is very inefficient compared to using BDR.

Remember the good old days? You'd come home from school and break out your new copy of Superman: The Secret Years. You knew that you always had a Super Hero you could depend on. Unfortunately now, bound with the ties of life, you no longer have time to spend reminiscing on the heroes of your youth.

According to a recent survey by Experian Marketing Services, the average American spends approximately 58 minutes per day on their smartphone. Those of us who are gadget lovers may respond by saying, "One hour, is that all?" A device taking up one hour per day has huge implications with how we both live and do business.

One uncontrollable aspect in life is Mother Nature. There's no way you can stop a hurricane from ripping your roof off, but you can have an emergency plan in place for when/if it happens. People need to know what their responsibilities are and the action they need to take in those cases. How will your business continue operations in the event of a natural disaster?

You can't log onto your online account if you're dead, and unless you have your password clearly marked on a sticky note, then nobody else will be able to either. While the Internet is a great distraction to keep us from pondering our mortality, the issue of post-mortem social media forces us to face death by preparing a digital will.

It's a digital revolution! Everyone is enjoying their new technology...and then there's the old-school fax machine, still hanging around, printing off faxes, and reminiscing about the good old days before there was this new fad called the Internet. Fax machines put a damper on the whole digital revolution vibe. It's high time to retire them and start saving money!

At the end of the workday you may be in a hurry to leave, and as you start tossing your belongings into your bag, you come across your USB drive plugged into your PC. You're now faced with a tough decision; do you take the time to safely remove the device, or do you save 30 seconds and just unplug it?

With everything going digital, it's hard to believe that fax machines are still used today. What's funny, is that this same statement is true today just like it was ten years ago. Yet, sales of fax machines continue to increase every year. An alternative that's better in every way is a fax server solution; here are five ways it can save you money.

There are many challenging aspects that come with running a business, but which aspect is the most difficult? According to a 2012 survey of small business owners by The National Federation of Independent Businesses, managing costs is the most difficult responsibility. We can help; BrightWire managed IT services turn technology into a more predictable expense. With the ultimate goal of making your business IT investment pay dividends of improved efficiency.

With office work, a lack of physical activity is often coupled with extra calories from mindless snacking. Office snacks are great for your appetite, but bad for your waistline. These extra calories require extra physical activity to burn off. If you understand how much exercise a little snack will ask of you, then you might think twice about eating it.

As a business, you do things differently than the mild-mannered consumer. Like paying bills, it’s not like a business can sit down for half an hour every month, write a few checks, and then be done with it. Businesses have employees whose major duty is paying bills. Technology is the same way, and businesses have different technology needs than consumers.

Managing your business is demanding. Staying on top of your employees, your inventory, shipments, payroll, and a hundred other things can be draining to say the least. The last thing you need is to add to your leadership burden. Let us manage your technology vendors for you! Our vendor management service will relieve you from these three management stresses.

The whole purpose of having a network infrastructure is to allow different users to access and share needed files and applications. With your data centralized to a server, you will need to have a system in place that allows certain people up-to-date permissions to access needed files from every computer. This is where Active Directory comes in.

Do you feel tied down by your phone system? Traditional phone plans can be expensive and your phone bill will grow if you try to do more, like add lines and use extra features. One of the ways that the Internet can help your business save money and grow is by replacing expensive phone plans with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Isn't it nice to have everything prepared for you? Of course it is. Whether it's having your dinner made for you when you get home, or having your car turned over to you fueled up and cleaned out, everybody appreciates having everything taken care of. In the world of technology, we take care of everything with our turnkey business management solutions.

Servers have always been one of the more expensive yet crucial pieces of your IT infrastructure. A new development in servers is the microserver, which is a stripped down version of a server. The appeal is that they can be designed to handle one task efficiently, and therefore, use fewer resources while costing less to purchase and maintain.

We often talk about the need to back up your data, but did you know that it is also a best practice to back up your hardware? Backing up your hardware works differently than data backup; whereas data backup involves network devices and a cloud, backing up your hardware is a simple matter of having extra computer components on your premise.