Posted by: David Dittman
December 15, 2007
Issue #308

Infrastructure Part 1

Welcome to another Saturday Edition!

It’s time we sit down and discuss a few things.

It’s a long awaited talk that your parents probably never gave you but SHOULD have!

It’s about the birds, the bees and most importantly your IT department.

I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this. (I can almost hear Bill Gates and the consortium of IT dorks cringing at the content of this document.)

I’m hoping that after reading this Clayton doesn’t give me the Axe …

Well, enough is enough, PEOPLE your IT department is lying is to you.

It is not that hard! IT ain’t Rocket Surgery!

Before Clayton rescued me from the clutches of computer consulting, I was often asked to do a seemingly impossible thing.

Here is the standard conversation that is asked of all consultants when it comes time to discuss the building of your IT infrastructure:

Client: Can you build me a great business network that has all the bells and whistles, I need to remote in from home and I need multiple people accessing company files from multiple locations, with security to boot?

Me: Oh sure.

Client: Great! How much? My budget is about $3000, and can I surf the Internet on this system later this afternoon?

Me: Dahhh …

I’m going to let you in on a little secret my Dad taught me years ago.

He said “Son, you get what you pay for.”

In IT and in most of society in general, you get what you pay for.

So you can’t have the latest and greatest without coughing up some dough.

That being said, don’t despair … just because you need to invest some money doesn’t mean you need to spend frivolously.

My goal today is:

• Help you figure out what you need and what is eye candy …
• Give you a breakdown on the average expenses …
• Explain where you can cut some corners on expenses and not take too much of a hit in performance …
• Lastly, give you some pros and cons of a few different IT packages.

There are a lot of cool tools out there these days that are designed to replicate a fully functional business server environment without plopping down the dough for a real one.

Let’s start by talking about what you’ll need as a growing business owner. Now sadly, this is a bit business specific when you get into the real details, but overall a small to medium business needs some essentials to get rolling no matter what they actually provide as a service.

Vince Lombardi always said that the key to success was running the basic plays flawlessly.

That’s what we need to focus on here.

Your particular business may change slightly depending on the needs of the business, but no matter what your business is these are important.

Internet Access: You need both reliable and fast Internet access. Chances are pretty good that you have this covered, since you are reading this article, but let’s talk briefly about what I mean.

In order to run an online business, you have to give yourself the best chance for success. When talking about your Internet connection, that means getting the best connection you can afford to.

I would order the connections like this:

1. T1 Connection
2. Cable Connection
3. DSL Connection

In most cases a cable solution will be the best you have access to at a reasonable price. The only real win that T1 connections give you are reliability, a constant upload and download speed, that doesn’t vary as much as cable Internet will, and your upload speed is typically much higher with a T1.

The trade off is, of course, price. Most T1 solutions will be over $100/month, and in most cases much higher.

Your Business Network: Now this is subject to review. One could make an argument that you don’t need to have an internal network, and you may not in your particular scenario.

That being said, you probably do need it. Even if you have a small office with two employees, you can save huge amounts of time and money by networking the two of you together.

To explain further I am going to explore two scenarios.

Scenario 1: You do not have employees at your location; you work mainly with consultants and external employees.

In this scenario, you can probably get by without having a complicated internal network.

You’re going to want to do a few basic tasks on a regular basis:

• E-mail.
• Share Files.
• Meet with Clients and Consultants through teleconferences.
• Remotely access the files on your computer when you are traveling or away from your desk.

E-mail:

Your e-mail server can be hosted off-site through either your website host (GoDaddy, Yahoo), a dedicated e-mail server (MailStreet) or a web mail client (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail).

This is great for a few reasons:

• You don’t have to know how it works, you just walk through the setup with the companies.
• You don’t need a support staff to keep your e-mail running. These companies do that for you.
• You don’t have to worry about your server crashing or backing up your e-mail folder if set up correctly.
• These companies have their own SPAM and virus protection. You should still have software on your computer to protect against SPAM and viruses, but you won’t have to worry about protecting it on the server level.

So clearly, this could save you a bunch of money, compared to hosting your own exchange server.

Share Files:

When talking about sharing files, this could mean a few different things. In this case I am talking about you as the business owner wanting to share files with employees or consultants.

We’ve all been in a scenario where we have to work on something and then send it to another person at a different location.

Yousendit.com specializes in sending very large files, via e-mail to the recipient or recipients of your choice.

What they do is take your file, upload it to their server, then they send an e-mail to the person you are sending the file to, with a link to the file.

This is great, because it won’t slow up their mail server by sending a huge attachment and it will allow you to send files bigger than you could normally send through a typical e-mail server.

They allow you to send a 100 MB file free and a 2 GB file for various monthly premiums depending on your specific needs.

Meet With Clients:

This is another very common need for most businesses. At some point, you’ll have to meet with a consultant or a strategist or a potential client.

For this common need and many other similar needs, the good people at Citrixonline.com have got what you need.

They have four main products that cover many common Internet uses, specifically hosting a meeting, hosting a webinar and remotely accessing your pc.

We’ll talk about remotely accessing your pc in the next section, but now let’s talk about GoToMeeting.com.

I have nothing but great things to say about GoToMeeting.com. The service is simply a way to meet remotely with clients and business partners over the phone and Internet.

That being said, it can be so much more. You have the ability to show people in the meeting what is on your computer screen and also give them control of your computer.

For example, if I was having a printer issue, I could start a meeting and invite my friend who lives in another country and is a printer expert. Now, I can share my desktop, show him my problem and then give him control of my computer to fix it.

I have also seen this used as a teaching tool, where someone can talk you through a step, observe if you are correctly implementing something, and correct if needed.

So basically, this can be used in any number of ways to effectively communicate over the phone and Internet.

Remotely Access your computer:

Another key ability is the ability to retrieve data from your computer when you are not in front of it.

How many times have you been away from your desk and you just need to quickly fix a Word document or check your documents folder for something?

All the time!

Well, once again the geniuses over at citrixonline.com had us in mind when they started GoToMyPC.com.

They basically set you up with a way to access any portion of your computer, through the web.

So if you are away on business and you have your laptop, but you mistakenly copied the wrong presentation, no problem, just log on to your GoToMyPC.com account and grab the right file.

Scenario 1, conclusion:

The bottom line … you can save thousands of dollars if you use these services.

Let’s run the numbers …

The system I outlined above will cost you:

• GotoMeeting.com: $49.00 month for a total of $588.00 a year or $468 a year if you buy it all at once.
• GoToMyPC.com: $19.95/month or $179.40 a year if purchased at once.
• YouSendIt.com: FREE if you stay below 100 MB file and only transfer 1 GB of info per month. $9.99/month to upgrade to multiple files and more bandwidth.
• GoDaddy.com: $19.00/yr for 5 email addresses and 1 GB storage.

Total would be: $72/ month for a total of $864.

Or if you paid by the year it would be $667.

So let’s take that number and add in your basic Internet service, which I will quote at $60/month to account for areas where it is higher, most cities have plans around $19 - $29 month.

That totals $720 a year for Internet service, plus $667 for the other services outlined above.

Just for giggles, let’s bring in some other numbers to flush to out.

Internet Access: $720
The services listed above: $667
Payment Gateway: $720
Website: $100

So you could run a fully functional custom website with a shopping cart, plus complete access to file sharing, remote PC connection and e-mail accounts for less than $3000 a year.

Ask most companies what they pay for similar services, and I guarantee it is about 10 times that.

Other Considerations…

Your Computer: Now a lot of people think this is Number One, but it is in actuality not nearly as important as your connection. The bottom line is the cheapest computer on the market can connect at a much faster rate than almost all Internet connection speeds available to you.

You would have to spend thousands of dollars a month for a connection that could out run the cheapest computer.

Whoo! I think that is enough to chew on for one installment. Clearly, there will be specific issues that your unique scenario will have to address that might dictate special considerations.

The goal today was to provide an overview and get you thinking about where you could potentially trim the fat in your current networking scheme. Make sure you catch the follow-up to this article next time where I will show you some cost cutting tips for employers that have multiple employees.

I hope this helps you out!

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Editor, Working IT Out
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™

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4 Comments »

1. Comment by Dean Kennedy — December 15, 2007 @ 8:45 am

   That\’s a fantastic summary of advice.

   I love my Google email for having more than 5Gb of free mail space (along with the convenience of one login to lots of other handy Google services).

   I also find YouSendIt.com a great way to transfer high res photos and graphic files (in our design/print business) – professional and easy to use.

   I\’d never really taken the right notice of the GoTo products, so thanks for the explanation! The remote access option will be a perfect addition when I\’m travelling and don\’t have the 1.5Tb hard disk of client files with me!

2. Comment by samir — December 15, 2007 @ 9:41 am

   no

3. Comment by John Gilger — December 15, 2007 @ 10:06 am

   Your web hosting service may provide an FTP server for transferring large files.

   Mine does.

   Using FTP, I can send files that are several gigabytes in size with no problem.

4. Comment by Jacques — December 26, 2007 @ 4:26 am

   For \’online\’ teams, we use [URL=http://www.collaber.com]Collaber[/URL]

   From their site: \”Collaber brings a Virtual Office Environment for your team to share files, events, tasks, manage projects and get the work done as if they are all located in the same location, no matter where the members are physically located. It keeps your date safe and secure.\”

   One of the main reasons we use it, is the fact that your data is stored locally - so, even offline, you can work on your projects and update them - the moment you get online again, everything is synchronised.
   Other than that, their support is very good - they listen to requests, feedback and input.

   I agree with your recommendations: YouSendIt works very well, Gmail is great (good Spam filter and POP setup - reply-addresses can even be your domain!) and GoDaddy gives good support.

   So yes, it pays off to do some research - instead of being scammed by some sharpdressed, fast-talking sales-person