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Virtual Private Servers (vps) – a Guide

December 12th, 2009

 

Web Hosting, if tarred with as broad a brush as possible, is split into Shared and Dedicated Hosting. There are those who purchase a space on a server for their own use, and then there are those who just buy the server. A bit like buying a plane ticket, or buying a plane (except the difference between a return to Oslo and a Cessna are a bit more pronounced).

There is a bridge over these troubled waters, however. It’s known as VPS (Virtual Private Server – it’s also known as VDS, Virtual Dedicated Server, but that’s not as common, presumably because it leads to confusion with old fashioned displays and sounds like something unsavoury you might catch on a night out in Calcutta). VPS allows freedom from the constraints of Shared Hosting, without the expense or expertise of a Dedicated server.

A Shared Hosting server typically has an operating system installed on it, and the host then installs the software they want – they set the server exactly as they like it, and then customers pay them certain amounts of money to purchase a little space on the server. The customer has as much control over that space as the host will let them, and their performance will be based on however many customers are Sharing the server (hundreds, perhaps). Remember that a server is just like your computer at home or at work – and just like your computer, it has a certain amount of memory and a certain speed of processor, and it can only do so many things at once before it has to start putting people in a queue (this is the point where your site may seem slower than usual).

A Dedicated server works the same as a Shared server, except the owner of the server has far more control over what is on their server. Like the hosting company with the Shared server, the owner of the Dedicated can pick the operating system, what software is installed, and how many sites run on the server. If a Dedicated server is set up specifically for one site and is configured for that site alone, that site will run considerably faster than a site on a Shared server. It doesn’t have to share resources and it can be built purely for the purposes of running that site.

VPS sits between these two types of hosting. There are several kinds of VPS, but we will focus on software VPS. In this instance, the host will buy the server, and install an Operating System (OS) on it. They then use another program (i.e. Virtuozzo) to create several isolated Virtual Servers (sometimes known as Containers) on the server. Each of these Containers is a Virtual Server – they function as if they were stand-alone, Dedicated Servers, when in actual fact they are a more advanced form of Shared hosting!

Compared to Shared hosting, VPS has many benefits. To begin with, Shared hosting comes with no performance guarantees. That’s not to say that Shared hosting is slow – it’s just that some sites require a lot more resources than others, and a few busy or intensive sites on a full Shared server could well impact the performance of everyone else (try opening a few basic programs on your computer at once , keep them open, and then see how well your computer runs when you start a virus scan – those basic programs aren’t so responsive now, are they?).

With a VPS, your Container will come with a guaranteed proportion of the server’s resources. This usually comes in the form of RAM (Memory) available – for instance, your VPS might come with a guaranteed 256 or 512 MB of RAM. This means that, regardless of how many people there are on the server, regardless of how busy their sites are, you always, always have that much memory available for you to use. Some companies also advertise the ‘burst’ memory available to you as well. This is essentially the memory that you could conceivably use, assuming that everyone else isn’t using their quota. However ‘burst’ memory is a subjective term – as there are no guarantees on how often this memory will be available to you (beyond the length of a piece of string), it’s more a fancy figure to impress potential customers with.

As a Container is purchased with a guaranteed RAM quota, there will be far fewer customers sharing a VPS server than there would be sharing a, er, Shared server. So the CPU won’t be divided between as many clients and their respective demands on it, so speeds will improve and the load on the CPU will decrease. All in all – your hosting will be noticeably faster. Again, some hosts will advertise CPU preferences, server contention rates etc., to demonstrate how the more expensive VPS packages will take preference to some degree over the cheaper packages when requesting resources from the CPU. How much this makes an impact on your decision to buy that VPS or not is up to you; many hosts don’t make any preferences between packages whatsoever.

The other major benefit to a VPS is the extra control that you will have over your hosting. If you’ve managed to find someone who does hardware VPS, then you’ll be able to pick your own OS as well (hardware VPS, essentially, creates the VPS on a hardware level rather than a software level – the good part; you can do whatever you like with your VPS – the bad part; the hardware, rather than shared, is divided, so instead of having the use of, for instance, a 2gHz processor and a guaranteed 256MB of RAM, you get a .5gHz processor and a guaranteed 256 MB of RAM if 4 people are sharing your server). From here you can configure your hosting as you see fit – customise your PHP settings, install PHP x, Zend whatever, Hardy Heron and/or Peggle (not recommended for a work environment). Even better, as your VPS is essentially a Virtual Machine, you can take snapshots of your entire VPS – so your whole account can be backed up into a single file, and then should something go horribly wrong, you can use the snapshot to restore the VPS in its entirety.

VPS will, of course, cost more than Shared Hosting, but on the flip side of the coin it is considerably cheaper than a Dedicated server. If performance is more of an issue for you than cost then a Dedicated is the way forward – a VPS will never be able to command the amount of resources that a Dedicated server used for the same purpose can. But as a cost-effective solution to providing a significant performance boost to your hosting, as well as allowing yourself a greater degree of control – VPS is hard to fault.

*Please note – I’ve been to Calcutta. I’m not implying that the place is unsavoury, disreputable, or otherwise trying to smear the good name of Calcutta in any way – it just seemed to round the sentence off nicely!

About the Author:

Ewan MacLeod works for NuBlue, a UK based Web Agency that specialises in Web Design and Web Hosting.

I work for NuBlue Web Solutions, providing Web Hosting, Design and Marketing services.
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A Few Uses Of Having An IT Service Partner

December 12th, 2009

It is a pretty well known fact that when a company partners with an IT service professional it will give them a cutting edge against their competition, gaining access to some of the greatest and latest technology available on the market now. An IT service professional definitely brings in a lot of usage in administrative and marketing aspects of a corporation. Listed below are a few uses that an IT service professional provides a business, but these are just a few as having an IT service professional on First and foremost, your company will be more secure, as IT service professionals are dedicated to securing their networks. Next, you company will get the opportunity to access updated information and applications by partnering with an IT service professional. This is especially important for the companies who want to be ahead of the game and gain access to the newest and greatest technology available. By employing an IT service professional, you can save on labor costs as well, for you will not have to have your other employees stay overtime to fix any problems to your network! For instance, if you happen to get a virus in your system, this could knock down one or two of your employees for days! If you employee an IT service partner, your employees will not have to deal with the virus, the IT employee would. Most businesses these days use more than one operating system. For instance, windows and UNIX are two different operating systems and in this day and age, having multi-operating systems has become quite necessary. Businesses that have to deal with diverse functions by deploying both operating systems, as each operating system require multiple computers and all sorts of different software. Having an IT service professional on your team and in your company will allow you to stay ahead of the game and the IT service professional can give you insight to any new upgrades for each operating system. A person that does not know how to work each operating system usually find themselves struggling, well that is no longer a problem! For having an IT service professional on hand will allow you to learn the ins and outs of both systems! Partnering with an IT service professional makes your work easier, as you can leave the technological aspects to an IT service professional. As you can see, there are many different reasons to choose an IT service professional; they can help you with everything from learning two different operating systems all the way to fixing each and every computer in your company and making it more secure.

More info (in Danish) about IT-service and virtualisering at our website.
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Top 10 Tips for Data Recovery

December 11th, 2009

What would happen to your business if you experienced a catastrophic data loss? Would your business survive? The statistics are alarming, 43% of businesses never re-open after a major disaster. A well planned data recovery strategy can deliver improved resilience with predictable costs and no unscheduled downtime. It will also allow you to sleep at night! Below are some points to consider when compiling your Data Recovery plan.

1. Identify your data recovery needsData Recovery is vital for the survival of your business. Your data defines and separates your business from any other in the market. If failure should occur at any level of your infrastructure it can be felt across the business. You must ask yourself, how would your business survive a disaster? And what provisions do you have in place for your business to continue after?

2. Understand the risksData loss can range from the accidental deletion of files; to the failure of your entire site. Without data recovery precautions in place you are putting your organisation at risk. IT failure is considered to be the most common threat to businesses, with electrical, hardware and software failure also posing considered risks. The threat of fire and natural disaster, although considered less likely can have the most devastating consequences. Findings from a CBI study indicate that a high level of disruptions in 2008 and 2009 were due to extreme weather incidents such as snow, flood or high winds.   

3. Assess how critical your data isThe key aspect of data recovery is understanding just how critical your data is. By compiling an assessment on the risks to your business you can then develop a tiered recovery strategy that will ensure all levels of your infrastructure can be recovered in the event of a disaster. 

4. Assess how easily you can recover a fileData backup is required by all businesses. With legal requirements tightening and data volumes growing out of control, traditional tape backup is no longer a reliable or cost effective means of meeting compliance levels. Managed Online Data Backup Services enable you to instantly recover files within seconds and deduplicate data to make the most of your storage; saving resources and reducing costs. Data is encrypted during the backup process to offer the highest level of security and is ready for recovery if needed.  

5. Consider what the impact of a server failure would beAssessment for data recovery calls for you to consider the maximum amount of downtime you can afford for any system before the impact becomes critical to business operations. You can define your data recovery policy according to how critical that system is, the chance of failure and how much you are willing to spend to minimise recovery time.   

6. Assess how easily you could recover your systemsThe process of re-installing an operating system, its service packs and updates, along with applications and new device drivers can take hours or even days, contributing to your overall recovery time. Prior to the lengthy process of application installation and data restoration, a compatible system is required, adding yet more downtime to that ticking clock. The reality is that system failure could result in over week of downtime till your system is back up and running.   

7. What is the impact of downtime on your company?For most large organisations, to be without a particular system, such as email for any length of time could result in the loss of business. Should the system running your website fail, and customers attempt to visit an inactive site, the chances are they will not return. The longer the site is down, the more business you could potentially lose. It is vital that you can recover your systems as quickly as possible, reducing downtime and limiting loss of business. Essentially, any length of downtime can be harmful to your business, but extended downtime could spell out the end.   

8. Assess what method of system recovery is best suited to your critical systemAssessing the critical levels of your specific data and systems, allows you to set a data recovery policy that works best for you depending on the Recovery Point Objective (RPI) of your data. Bare metal recovery essentially backs up the entire system, enabling you to recover the operating system, application software and data in a single pass, reducing your recovery time by hours. This solution enables you to recover to either similar or dissimilar hardware. Online disk backup allows you to increase the frequency of your backup for more dynamic and rapidly changing data. This Real-time protection solution provides this and, with tiered recovery architecture, you have the flexibility of backing up more frequently on critical systems and less frequently on non-critical systems. This saves you money as it cost-effectively balances your data protection needs. Another method is continuous data protection (CDP), which improves your time to recover a complete system. With CDP, you backup very rapidly across a LAN to your local vault onsite while simultaneously backing up over the wire to a vault in offsite, providing protection from on-site and natural disasters.   

9. Consider how your network would survive a disasterPutting a resilient data recovery policy in place insures your data against failure, but what about your network? Your network infrastructure is vital to continuous running of your organisation. A disaster on site will take out your network as well as your data. Hosting your network with a service provider offers you a fully managed solution for network recovery. Your network will be accessible even in site failure, ensuring that your business continues as normal.   

10. Consider how your telephony would survive a disasterManaged hosting is the ultimate business continuity solution. Not only can you host your data, systems and network safely offsite in the service providers ‘cloud’; you can also protect your telephony systems in the same way. Service providers such as InTechnology offer a portfolio of hosted cloud services to protect your entire infrastructure. Hosting your IT infrastructure in the cloud covers every aspect for business continuity as well as allowing you access to extra computing resources when you need them. For a truly resilient business continuity solution that is flexible with your business needs, managed hosting is the answer.  

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How will Cloud Computing affect IT Support Services

December 11th, 2009

How will Cloud Computing affect IT Support Services.

In the 80’s it was Home Computing, in the 90’s it was Internet Computing, the 00’s was wireless computing. What’s next?????????

Cloud Computing is looking to be the way forward.

Cloud Computing, similarly to home computing and the internet will revolutionize the way people interact and use technology. Cloud computing will change the way you live.

By Definition Cloud Computing is style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.

Any Clearer?

Cloud Computing essentially will remove capital expenditure for the consumer treating the use of a computer as a service rather than a physical purchase as the computing power will be pooled in “the cloud” allowing maximum processing power shared across many systems and infrastructures.

The server infrastructure is therefore integral to the effectiveness of cloud computing and the “virtualization” of its resources to supply the demand of the cloud users. The cloud with be able to be accessed virtually through an internet connection, the server will contain open source and or registered software which can be accessed online and used by the user from any computer with an internet connection. The virtualization of server and client hardware can be distributed to fit the demand.

Where does this put IT support?

Some of the best IT Support Companies in the world rely on maintaining client hardware issues as well as infrastructure problems and software glitches, this could all change with cloud computing as companies will have infrastructures based solely within the cloud, thus removing the need for a complex hard wired network.

IT Support Companies therefore need to identify the need to support server virtualization in order to benefit from the change to cloud computing. When companies adopt a cloud structure they’ll want an IT Support company to be able to provide adequate IT support. Those who focus on server consolidation and flexibility will be those who come out on top.

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What is the real difference between VMware ESXi and VMware ESX?

December 9th, 2009

I dedicate today’s article on emphasizing the differences between VMware ESXi and VMware ESX. As many of you still believe that VMware ESX is better than VMware ESXi, where another team is still wondering if VMware ESXi is better than VMware ESX. As the two products names & functionality is very similar, they can easily get you confused. I don’t think you should ask which one is better, but which one fit me the best. Keep reading to find out how they different & which one is best suitable for your environment.

The first thing you should ask your self: What are the differences between VMware ESXi server & VMware ESX server?

- The first major difference between ESX & ESXi is that ESXi has no service console, which means that you can’t execute any commands on the local console of the machine like its possible with ESX. Please note there is a smaller subset of commands that can be executed against the ESXi remotely using “Remote CLI”, which is sufficient for most users. To be honest if you are an expert in VMware ESX, then you will know there is a very tiny unsupported console on the ESXi which meant to be only used by VMware support.

- As VMware ESXi has no service console, the size of it shrinks dramatically. In addition it will require way less patching than the normal version. Remember the Service console is running a stripped out version of Redhat which will require way more patches than the VMware kernel it self, so by getting rid of that you can save a lot of the time on getting updates.

- VMware ESXi was originally meant to be distribute as a very small image, which get to be preinstalled by your hardware vendor on a small flash memory drive (or solid state drive as in ESXi 3 the size is less than 32MB & in vSphere its less than 100MB in total. Though now VMware ESXi is available to be installed by the user, as long its supported on your particular server by your Hardware vendor.

- Please note the free VMware ESXi server includes the file system and functionality, VMFS, VMware Virtual SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) – which is the ability to configure more than one virtual CPU per VM, but in order to run advanced functionality such as VMotion, DRS, HA, Storage VMotion, FT you will require an additional license. If you need a basic & reliable Virtualization platform then the free ESXi can do the job for you, & when you decide to grow up & you require more advanced features you will only have to acquire the feature license and enable it in ESXi. In the other hand, VMware ESX has no free version offered & you will have to purchase a license to start using it. Please note the minimum license of VMware ESX has plenty more features than what is enabled on the Free ESXi before adding any license to ESXi. Though you always can obtain a license for the VMware ESXi & run all the features supported by VMware ESX without reinstalling anything.

- Please note when you obtain the free VMware ESXi, it will not include any official support till you obtain a license. This means if you are keeping the free VMware ESXi you will have to depend on the community support till you obtain a license which enable many features as said earlier. Its worth mentioning though the VMware community is very helpful.

So again you might be asking yourself when to use VMware ESXi & when to use VMware ESX?

Which one is the right solution for my environment is it VMware ESXi or VMware ESX?

Eiad Al-Aqqad is the founder of VirtualizationTeam.com. Eiad have been delivering Consultation & implementation in the Storage & Virtualization Area for Enterprise customers for over 7 years & always giving back to the community by sharing his knowledge online.
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A CIO is Not Just an IT Director with a Big Budget

December 9th, 2009

The Govern recommended that agencies address Chief Information Officer [CIO] turnover by implementing human capital flexibilities, such as recruiting bonuses, retention allowances and skill-based pay.

You need more frequent communication between Chief Information Officer [CIO] and CFO – and other executives – on business/services/manufacturing-operations performance and Chief Information Officer [CIO] requirements.

Information Technology [IT] and finance seë the whole picture.

The bottom line is, we’re in business/services/manufacturing to makë money.

This is a far cry from the disparatë silos of under utilised server, storage, network and application resource that plaguë organisations today, creating hideous complexity and draining already strained budgets.

Surely IT represents the pill that will cure the CIO’s headache? An example is an enterprise program-management office that coordinates individual projects and holistic programs across the enterprise.

Another discipline is portfolio management – a way to look across IT investments and balance them across business/services/manufacturing needs, in both the short and long terms.

Virtualised: Computing resources are pooled and tailored for simpler management and better utilisation.

Instead of having to purchase additional hardware to cater for peaks in demand, under-utilised resource from elsewhere within the business/services/manufacturing is harnessed.

IT also means better support for the business/services/manufacturing processes that depend on computing.

Many organizations are embarking on a strategies that leveragë globalization trends.

The Chief Information Officer [CIO] is one of the few places in the organization where all of those things comë together and where there is a view across the enterprise.

These trends drive transformations that are enterprisewidë and hugely dependent on technology for their success.

The Chief Information Officer [CIO] is at the eyë of the storm.

Are you a Chief Information Officer or an Information Tecnology [IT] director? The terms themselves are academic, but the roles are fundamentally different.

A Chief Information Officer [CIO] is not just an Information Tecnology [IT] director with a bigger budget.

They spend their timë completely differently.

You be necessary believes that the Information Tecnology [IT] staff need to focus on the valuë of what they are doing to the business/services/manufacturing, rather than seeing their work in isolation.

Publishing Guidelines: You may publish my article in your newsletter, on your website or in your print publication provided you include the resource box at the end. Notification would be appreciated but is not required.

S. Maurer is a 53-years old college graduated IT professional, with 30 years of experience in the computer & technology business. Now is the Correspondence Courses Director of the Abet Open University: http://distance-learning-mba-online-mba-program-executive-jobs.net and http://mba-library.com.
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Useful Tools are not Always Costly

December 8th, 2009

I have decided that to get 2008 off to a good start, we need to forget, for a moment, the credit squeezes, interest rate crunches and other fiscal woes that afflicted 2007. With this in mind, I will continue a tradition I started a couple of years ago and give you my top five list of free-to-download software for the coming year.My first choice is the excellent Moka5. It opens up an enormous range of possibilities for deploying and maintaining a virtual PC to multiple hosts, either via your own web server or Moka5’s online hosting service. A Bare Metal version even frees you from needing an instance of Windows to run it on. But the best feature is that someone has posted a public LivePC that contains a huge collection of text adventure games from the 70s and 80s, including the grandaddy of them all, Adventure. Moka5 is still free, but I don’t know for how much longer, as it appears to use Amazon for hosting the public LivePCs.If you need a more traditional virtualisation platform that is not Microsoft or VMware, try Innotek’s VirtualBox. It is a bit of an oddball, with open source and proprietary versions available.

The closed-source version adds features such as RDP support so you can connect to your virtual PCs remotely via any RDP client, plus support for USB over RDP and even an iSCSI initiator that lets you host the virtual machine on an iSCSI target. It is free for personal and evaluation use.

Next is a program I wrote about a couple of years ago, but is now available in a new incarnation and still deserves a place in any IT toolkit. Microsoft Steady State is the new name for the Shared Computer Toolkit, and it is one of the easiest ways to prepare locked-down Windows XP PCs for use in, say, a classroom or public area. This new version has a revised interface and a simpler way of choosing user-restriction levels.Probably my all-time favourite is Foldershare. When it first launched I was a fanatical evangelist for this secure P2P file sharing client. I use it to keep files in sync between home and work as a kind of poor man’s off-site backup. It used to cost an arm and a leg, but is now totally free.My final choice is something I am sure an IT manager could find a good business use for – the open-source x86 DOS emulator DOSbox. It is a fully MS-DOS-compatible virtual PC environment designed to let people run old DOS games. It has been ported to many operating systems, including OS X, so you can dig out your old copy of Quake and have a blast. Purely in the interests of research, naturally.

This article is contributed by John Whaley – Founder and CTO of MokaFive. MokaFive is the next generation desktop virtualization company managing the lifecycle of virtual “Desktops as a Service.”
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Co-location and the Benefits

December 8th, 2009

Co-location most commonly refers to running or installing data into a single computer, data centre or process. For example, virtualisation happens when a host server uses virtual software and hardware platforms to run more than a single instance of a piece of software on a different platform. When it comes to website hosting, co-location involves co-locating the network equipment that keeps your website up to another location. There are a number of facilities that exist specifically for the co-location of equipment. The gear may be co-located to a brand new location, but the end result is essentially the same and does not necessarily impact your website’s capabilities.
The biggest decision to make when it comes to your hosting is whether or not you should go for data centre hosting or co-location, however they are actually one and the same for the most part.
Co-location facilities are data centres, but not all data centres are co-location facilities. Some data centres may not allow for any equipment to be co-located, but may still allow for purchase of dedicated servers so that essentially the same thing can be achieved. Data centres are brick and mortar facilities; equipment is housed that allows for remote user access for web hosting and other computer related services. Co-location is the process of housing this data and information someplace else other than in these data centres owned by the hosting company in question.Some of the benefits of co-location are listed below:
- One benefit to co-location is an increase in security, as data centres offer strong server security and confidence for your most critical data. Data centres used in co-location are monitored all the time, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week which means that your data is safe.
- Your web host benefits from co-location because they do not have to shell out the costs associated with building and maintaining their own in house dedicated servers, therefore they can sell hosting to you and co-locate your hosting equipment to a more inexpensive option.
- Co-location allows hosting clients to have their own bandwidth, ram and other important hardware without being forced to share. What this means is that systems and servers can run at their highest possible capacity.
- Because co-location involves dedicated servers that are regularly monitored and located in the highest quality facilities, hosting clients can rest assure that the services they purchase will be 100% reliable and trustworthy.
- The concept at the core of co-location is location independence, which means that you are not required to have your data or equipment hosted by a specific data centre. Instead, you have independence to host your data and equipment wherever it is most feasible for the smooth operation of your business website or data.
By co-locating your server, your physical business can run efficiently and effectively.
- Another benefit of co-location is an increase in flexibility because you will be able to grow and upgrade your technology as your company grows without ever having to make additional investments.

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Essential Tools For Telemarketing From Home

December 7th, 2009

You’ve left the nitty gritty of the offline world, with its traffic jams, long lunch queues and bosses that breathe down your neck. You’ve decided that enough is enough, the internet has been giving people substantial profits and you want a slice of the ‘independence’ pie. Your road to financial freedom has been paved and all you need is the right sort of vehicle. Snooping around for an easy start, you’ve chosen telemarketing from home as your engine of success. That’s great. Telemarketing from home is a good way to start earning a viable living – and even exceed what you used to earn before in a cubicle drinking stale coffee. Now let’s examine essential tools for telemarketing from home.
Firstly, let’s examine the required physical infrastructure. You’ll definitely need an internet connection and a mid-range desktop computer. The companies you may be working for may not even be in the same country or hemisphere, so Skype and internet messaging services are a must, unless you are rich enough to use the phone to contact all your clients. You will also need internet access for research and critical list building.
Next, you’ll need to select the industry you wish to enter. Is it household? Entertainment? Lifestyle products? Consumer Pharmaceuticals? Always choose an industry you are totally comfortable with and have some experience in. And don’t worry, the internet and rising costs have forced many companies to ‘virtualise’ part or even all of their telemarketing sectors. This means more and more companies are increasing the profit margin by cutting costs – this means that whatever your interests there will probably be a relevant company that will offer you a job selling their products.
Try to avoid email marketing. It is the equivalent of a chain letter and just as effective in getting you an angry reply and a clogged and possibility deleted mail account. It is also frowned upon by telemarketers and companies who wish to maintain a high level of service integrity. So email marketing is a big no-no. Your viable solutions are phone, direct mail or fax. Good telemarketers utilise all three, sometimes for different products.
Practise speaking in a clear voice and more importantly, practise listening to people. If someone is rushing a presentation or having a bad day, pick up on it and call them later. Also, the product literature must literally be at your fingertips, don’t flounder about or stall when you are asked about a particular feature – that’s bad selling.
Get yourself started telemarketing from home. Good quality lists that are highly targeted are hard to find. The good news is that many companies online are offering extremely well put together lists – for all mediums and a wide range of products. Dissected into different industries, there isn’t a list you cannot find online. Be wary of those who offer ‘free’ lists – it has always been my maxim that investing a little can gain you a lot. Search the internet and you’ll find a number of reputable websites that offer targeted lists, but always do a bit of research first before purchasing or renting one!

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A Ceo’s Changelog for 2009 – Top 10 Priorities

December 7th, 2009

2009 will be a great year for technology and technology related solutions. Despite the current economic turmoil I feel very positive about how business is going to be in 2009. However, it will take a certain breed of leadership to rise up and take companies through this economic restructure. While everyone is talking about cutting costs, most are doing so at an employee level – even though, as a rule of thumb it should only be 18% of their overall expenses; businesses are quick to cut jobs at the first chance they get. As a CEO, what is most important to you? Success? Growth? Profit Margin? Turnover? What?

Now think about the various factors involved in achieving this most important thing. I want you to go right back to the source of these expenses. You spend mega bucks on acquiring new business – do you know or have a way of telling (in a snapshot) what your cost per lead/sale is? If yes, how do you know if you are paying too much or too less for winning new clients. You also spend a lot of time and resources keeping your customers happy – If there was a way to automate that or better still minimise the customers’ need for “hand-holding” then do you see yourself saving some money? Another one of your larger expenses is your infrastructure. Your machines, your computers, telephones, all the equipment you need to run your business – Have you considered virtualisation? Have you thought about working remotely (from home!)? There are several techniques you, as a CEO can implement in 2009 to cut costs without necessarily cutting jobs. Here’s a quick list in my opinion.

Above all else – DO NOT let anyone tell you that 2009 is not going to be a great year.

Manas is CEO of Genesis Interactive, an Auckland based SaaS vendor and technology innovator.
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