Business continuity is an issue that no organization can afford to ignore. In fact, according to The Definitive Handbook for Business Management, between 60 and 90 percent of companies without a proactive disaster plan find themselves out of business within 24 months of experiencing a major disaster.

Increasingly, IT power and cooling are becoming more important as factors in ensuring business continuity. These 10 steps provide a good start for ensuring the integrity and availability of your IT systems.

1. Assess your situation.
Review existing power and cooling systems to identify threats and vulnerabilities to business continuity.

2. Ensure the physical security of your equipment
While large data centers often have strict access policies and procedures, smaller locations or more remote locations may not. It’s important to use racks that come with key or card swipe locks and contact closures that protect against unauthorized access. These locks and closures can be connected to your network so you can easily provide authorizations and monitor access. Within the rack, smart PDUs enable control of individual receptacles. This prevents unauthorized equipment additions that can overload circuits and create a power outage.

3. Keep your cool
High heat can reduce the performance of equipment. IT equipment often requires 24x7 dedicated cooling, precise temperature, humidity and air filtration control and more efficient cooling provided only by precision cooling. Typically, racks with 1kW to 3kW need dedicated cooling, either through single cabinets with integrated cooling or through room level cooling.

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Why your small business needs an intranet
by Kim Komando
Reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center

One thing I like about running a small company is the ability to act quickly. Decisions are not bogged down by layers of management. In fact, most moves are made with the interested parties meeting around a conference table.

But there can come a point when your business outgrows this arrangement. You need constant, reliable and secure communications with others in the company to ensure successful growth. You need an intranet.

An intranet is similar to a Web site, and it uses Internet protocols, but it's an internal network exclusive to one company. (An "extranet" also is an internal or private Web site, but access privileges are extended to designated customers, partners and/or others.)

Most large corporations use intranets.
Information distribution is a huge task when you have 10,000 or more employees. Intranets can help cure that headache.

I hear you, "I don't have anywhere near 10,000 employees!" But I can give you three major reasons why your small business should invest in one. Here they are:

The wheels of business revolve with such spin and speed these days that we roll right over the courtesies. Who has time for quaint customs?

More to the point, who can afford to let competitors rush onto the new and the next while we slow down for pleasantries? You're in for a surprise. The advice that follows, rest assured, is not some �bermom lecture about society's loss of grace (not that I couldn't get into that). This is about leveraging an underutilized edge in the marketplace.

Today, extending old-time courtesies helps you stand out. Yes, boys and girls, saying "thank you" has become a competitive advantage. So few people express appreciation — a Lenox etiquette poll found that nearly five out of every 10 people don't always say thanks — that remembering to do so is a sales point of difference. It also goes a long way toward forging the relationships that can turn into opportunities.

Here are fast and affordable ways to show business gratitude, as well as tips about timing and tactics. Your takeaway: Don't underestimate the power of saying thanks.

August 2008

Server consolidation and virtualization can increase computing and data center performance while reducing costs. But they also change the power and cooling profile of your data center and can introduce potentially crippling power and cooling challenges.

With consolidation and virtualization, computing is concentrated on fewer servers, so each unit becomes more critical, requiring higher levels of protection. Additionally, new high density servers require more power and generate more heat that must be removed to avoid server degradation and allow you to fully utilize rack space.

Adapting your power and cooling strategy for consolidation and virtualization can help you:

     1. Remove power and heat-density constraints to your project
     2. Put more high-performance servers in fewer racks
     3. Save precious data center space
     4. Utilize less energy

Here are eight steps you can take to ensure your infrastructure is ready for a virtualized environment.

Just for Laughs