An ounce of prevention is not only worth the pound of cure, but could make the difference between survival and demise of your organization.

Let’s face it, it is human nature to learn the hard way. We often wait for “it” to happen, then work the rest of our lives to prevent it from happening again. In the case of your business, there may not be a second chance depending on the type of disaster.

You may be thinking, “thank goodness I’m backing up my data, and I can restore it at any time.” Unfortunately, that’s simply not enough in all cases. What if the loss involves more than just a few documents or databases? What if the services which house your data are gone as well, along with all the hardware as a result of a server or facilities disaster? To what location would you restore the data? How long would it take to set up a server, install and configure all of your applications (mail, database, etc.), and restore data?

Ask yourself, “What is my company’s tolerance for downtime?” How long would your email, database, file sharing, and other services need to be down before staff members, clients, and vendors begin to panic and look for alternatives? If you can tolerate several days or weeks of downtime, then you don’t need a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Otherwise, be thinking seriously about having a second instance of your hardware, applications, services, and data standing by.

As in the case of British Petroleum , disaster spells two separate catastrophes. One is the inability to continue business normally, and the second is the humiliation of disclosing the reason for the problem in the first place: lack of planning.

Despite steep advancements of the World Wide Web as a whole over the past few years, there is still a lack of flexible, reasonably priced tools available in the area of web based sharing. Hosted solutions tend to be expensive, charging upwards of $500 per month for minimal capabilities, not to mention most hosting services do not stay around for very long. Those products which you can install on your company’s internal computer system tend to be complex, bloated, expensive, and often require a team of trained technicians to cost you even more money.

What if there were a web based file sharing product which was inexpensive and easy to install on your office system, with basic, easily comprehensible features? Well, there is. We must disclose that it’s our own product and although we are not overly proud of it, we do feel that it addresses several consumer needs scarcely fulfilled by providers. It also comes with something fairly unique in this industry, called “customer service”. This means that your requests will be acknowledged within 24 hours regardless of your location on the globe. Installation support is free as well.

Oh yes, almost forgot. The product we’re raving about is FileSharePlus. Its features include email alerts, permissions levels, explorer-like functionality, image sharing including thumbnails, and that’s just the start. There is a free Community Edition which allows up to 20 users. FileSharePlus is built on ASP.NET, and is customizable to match your organization’s requirements. Download a copy and let us know what you think. We’ll help you install it, free of charge.

Let’s look at  something ordinary but critical such as your car’s tires. How many tires are on a car? Answer: five. We take the spare for granted, but it’s always there. We don’t think about it. You’re probably saying, “Okay, I have one backup system for my data as well. So I’m good.”

What if you blow out two tires at one time? You might call a friend or family member, and if they are not available, a 24-hr towing service. So, you really have several spares in case of tire failure.

What about computer systems failure and data loss? What if the safety net of that one, occasionally maintained backup system does not break your fall? What 2nd, 3rd, and 4th backups do you have?

Computer backup systems are run by computers, and therefore are not 100% reliable. That’s just a law of the silicon jungle. Using multiple types of backup systems allows for coverage of the gaps inherently present in each type. For example, the chances of both the tape, disk copy, and online backups failing at one time are very small as long as your system is running, and so on.

So, next time you sit down with your IT person, ask about backup system redundancy. You’ll probably get an earful if you haven’t already.

Sample VIP Card

Appreciation for our clients goes beyond words. Our VIP program entitles clients to product and service discounts based on annual purchase volume. No application is necessary. The three membership levels are Bronze, Silver, and Gold, each with its own discount rate.

1) BRONZE VIP:

5% discount on all Technical Framework products and services for a period of one year after reaching or renewing eligibility.

Bronze VIP eligibility is automatically reached or renewed if 5000 USD of products and/or services are purchased by client or as a result of client’s direct referrals combined, in any 12-month period.

2) SILVER VIP:

7% discount on all Technical Framework products and services for a period of one year after reaching or renewing eligibility.

Silver VIP eligibility is automatically reached or renewed if 10,000 USD of products and/or services are purchased by client or as a result of client’s direct referrals combined, in any 12-month period.

3) GOLD VIP:

9% discount on all Technical Framework products and services for a period of one year after reaching or renewing eligibility.

Gold VIP eligibility is automatically reached or renewed if 20,000 USD of products and/or services are purchased by client or as a result of client’s direct referrals combined, in any 12-month period.

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The client to whom Technical Framework is referred must identify the referring entity. Only one referring entity can be specified. Purchase date is the date Technical Framework receives funds in USD via Paypal or by bank check. VIP discounts are not valid if other discount programs are already in place. All terms are subject to change.

Mozy is a leader among online backup services. Our experience with Mozy includes backing up about a dozen of our servers several times per day over the past 2 years. We have restored several files on various servers successfully and gained a good amount of confidence in the Mozy system.

However, a recent Mozy failure left our team befuddled. The Mozy software on one of our servers started to fail, throwing the message, “Server Error 12″, which no error description. Mozy Tier-1 support asked us for the backup log from our server. The first thought here was, shouldn’t Mozy have the log?

After several email volleys with tier-1 one and no resolution, we had to request escalation. The tier-2 engineer said the issue was due to Mozy’s “manifest” file for our server being corrupt, and that a repair could take days. He further advised that our best option would be to simply purchase another server license and start the backup from scratch. By the way, the “manifest” is the database with all the information about your computer and what’s been backed up. It resides on Mozy’s end. Another irony: what doesn’t Mozy back up the manifest file?

Just before we set out to start from scratch with the server backup, we tried starting a backup job from the server one more time just for sanity, and magically, it worked. When we asked Mozy support what happened, they answered, “oh by the way, the repair of the manifest was successful.” So the backup is indeed running fine once again.

In conclusion, we have to give Mozy credit where it’s due. It’s not 100% reliable, but then again nothing is. Mozy’s system works for the most part, but I would have another mode of backup just in case. Mozy’s tech support process is far from refined, and at least in our case, left many questions unanswered.

If you’re looking for Mozy alternatives, check out Jungle Disk and Carbonite.

On-page, a.k.a. “on-site”, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of creating search-friendly content for engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The goal of SEO is not to obtain top placement in search results for every relevant keyword, but to be found often by qualified visitors. More importantly, it is about developing good content for your prospects. The better the content you create, the greater the chance for visitors and the search engines to find your website. According to a recent study by Mike Moran, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc., over 70 percent of Americans have some type of Internet access and 65 percent of those people make buying decisions based on online information.

Simply relying on the notion that your website will be found “because it is there” does not provide the competitive edge needed in today’s online world. On-page search engine optimization begins with a discovery of how well your website is ranked by major search engines and what aspects of your website need to be addressed for better ‘findability’.

Keyword development is the next step in on-page SEO. Keywords are words and phrases searchers type in the search engines to find their desired content. There are four basic types of keywords: hot, medium, cold, and brand. Hot keywords are terms with very high search volume like pizza or cars for example. Tomato paste and Chicago lawyer are examples of medium keywords. Cold keywords may not have high search volumes but may be very exact, for example, buy widgets in Orlando Florida. Brand keywords are related to your company, industry, and products.

Once the keywords are established, content writing can begin. Writing content with your target market in mind will make it much easier for visitors to find your website. Write in terms and language they will understand with phrases which relate to your products and services. The key component to quality SEO is the content on your website pages. The better the content and more it speaks to the target audience, the more visitors will find your website.

Keep in mind that search engines must find and evaluate millions of websites; therefore significantly improved search engine ranking can take weeks or months. Getting to the first page of Google is not easy and involves more than on-page SEO.