Ways to Reduce IT Spending Cost for Your Small-Medium Business

We all know that running a small or medium-sized business means there are a lot of things you can’t do that large corporations can only do, such as have their own IT department and technical department. Of course, you still need some sort of IT infrastructure since computers are an essential part of any business, especially startups and those still in the stages of growing pains. So, how do you trim down the numbers without sacrificing so much and risk losing the business?

If you’re looking for ideas on how to reduce IT spending without risk of losing the forward progress of your business, these tips might come in handy.

Learn about and use open source

You can save a lot of money when you don’t have to dole out precious funds for licensing fees to Microsoft and other third parties. And don’t ever think that using open source applications will move your business backward. On the contrary, many startups today are adopting open source in wholesale fashion because it is the technology of the future, and it’s also reliable, scalable, secure, and ready to serve nearly every need you have.

Shift to virtualize your servers

Instead of constantly repairing and replacing those aging servers, why not go virtual instead? You’ll save a lot of money on hardware or buying new computers, and your backups will be much easier while and failover will be almost non-existent. Add to this the fact that maintenance on your virtual server farm will be greatly streamlined, and you’ll arrive with the same conclusion as many IT pros have seen for themselves, in that, virtualization is always a win-win situation.

Prioritize your spending

Prioritizing is especially important for fixed spending, especially for those things that your business can’t do without. In fact, this should be one of the first things you do when faced with a small and fixed budget. Go through it line by line and prioritize the items you can’t do without. Then take them off the table and move on to what you can do without. While you’re prioritizing, make sure the spending on your priority item is really in existence. If item A is a priority, make sure the budget you have earmarked for item A is accurate. If you think you need to adjust on anything, then do so at once.

Outsource to data centers

If you’ve been spending a lot of money on legitimate licenses, but that is costing you a higher percentage of your budget than you deem necessary, migrate from a local server to a hosted server. Plenty of those services are available and they will save you money. You can also migrate away from that costly local backup solution and move it to the cloud since many data centers offer that as well.

Seek good advice from others

Seek the opinion of others who were affected by IT change, especially from your friends. They will give you key insight as to what works and what should be changed.

How “Turning it Off and On Again” Can Solve 90% of All Known Home User’s IT Problems

Yes, power cycling can solve most IT issues – and that is by simply turning your computer off and then turning it back on again.

It’s called power cycling, and it’s the act of turning a device or electronic equipment off, and turning it back on again. This is often done to computers and modems to correct a frozen, hung, or otherwise malfunctioning device. Normally, it is recommended to leave the device powered off for about 10 to 30 seconds before restarting. Sometimes in computer parlance, it’s called ‘restart.’

Of course, this is assuming that the problem is software in nature, and not hardware, and so, can be solved by power cycling. Here are a few ways to power cycle when using different gadgets and devices.

Remove the battery

If you have a gadget that suddenly freezes up and won’t work at all, pulling the battery is a good way to get it started. This applies to smartphones, laptops, digital cameras, and everything else with a removable battery. Before removing the battery, ensure the device is unplugged to ensure it isn’t receiving any power at all. Remove the battery, wait around 30 seconds, reinsert the battery, and turn it back on. The hardware will often come right back to life.

Long-Press the power button

Many new devices are coming without user-removable batteries, but users still need the ability to power cycle the gadget. If you have a device without a user-removable battery, there’s often a way to power cycle your device by long-pressing the power button. For computers, the power button is easy to locate. On Kindles, tablets, and most smartphones, long-pressing the power button for an entire 30 seconds will power cycle the device and force it to restart.

Unplug the power cable

If you have a device with neither a battery nor a power button, such as a router or modem, you can power-cycle the device by pulling its power cord and plugging it back in. However, you should wait at least 30 seconds to be safe, before plugging the device back in. If you plug it back in too soon, it may not lose power entirely.

If this didn’t solve your problem and your device still seems frozen (or dead), be sure that you’re following the correct procedure for your specific device. Check if your gadget has a reset pinhole instead of the power button, or may use a combination of buttons mentioned in the device’s manual. If following that process didn’t help, it’s possible that your hardware is dead and the device needs to be serviced or replaced. With computers, power cycling is synonymous with rebooting the whole system, this is why power cycling can also clean out whatever problem is inside the computer. If the problem persists, you may need to call a professional computer technical support company to see what the real problem is. Anything less than this, you might want to just turn off and turn on the computer or gadget to fix the problem.

Approach The World of New Technologies with Confidence: It's Not That Hard to Keep Up with It

Technology is considered to be the greatest agent of change in the modern world. While never without risk, positive technological breakthroughs promise innovative solutions to the most pressing global challenges of our time, from resource scarcity to global environmental change.  

One problem facing technology is the lack of appropriate investment, outdated regulatory frameworks, and gaps in public understanding prevent many promising technologies from achieving their potential.

Another problem, and the one that hits home with the masses, is attempting to keep up with technology, and failing.

It’s true that even while some technologies fail due to what was mentioned in the first problem, in the field of communications and the Internet, this is not so. In fact, many complain that it is hard to keep up with technology because the smartphone or app they buy today may be obsolete in just 6 months. But then, when we say “keeping up,” is it keeping up just to have the latest in technology, like the latest iPhone or the latest tablet, or is it merely keeping up to improve how to do things at work or at home?

When we attempt to keep up just to stay in trend, then the true purpose of technology is lost. A new smartphone model with new features that come with it may benefit some but not all, and this applies to all technologies. Technology should be bought and used as we need them and how useful they are to us, and not merely to just “keep up.”

So instead of just keeping up, here are a few technologies that we can all face with confidence because somehow in the future, we will need them.

Brain-computer interfaces

It is already possible to type just by monitoring the electrical activity of your brain, but as the technology advances, it could be possible for people with disabilities to operate wheelchairs using only their thoughts.

Body-adapted wearable electronics

Whether worn on the body, embedded in clothes or even under the skin, these devices can track information, such as heart rate and stress levels, giving people real-time feedback about their health.

Screenless display

A 3D image projected into space, or simply a screenless display, can convey information that a 2D image presented on a screen cannot, and is close to becoming a practical reality. One of the more frustrating aspects of modern communications technology is that, as devices have miniaturized, they have become more difficult to interact with; for example, no one types out a novel on a smartphone. The lack of space on screen-based displays provides a clear opportunity for screenless displays to fill the gap. Full-sized keyboards can already be projected onto a surface for users to interact with, without concern over whether it will fit into their pocket. Perhaps evoking memories of the early Star Wars films, holographic images can now be generated in three dimensions.

Nanowire lithium-ion batteries

New batteries based on silicon and using tiny silicon nanowires can have a longer life, charge more quickly, and hold up to three times the power of existing batteries.