Eric Swanson Network Consulting strives to use its extensive knowledge of Information Technology to serve the needs of small businesses and nonprofit agencies.

Ready to Respond

Most of our hours in the field are spent providing services to our users and their computer systems, so our field staff are always ready to respond to whatever crisis may arise. By planning a conservative field call schedule, cultivating a part-time and on-call workforce, and shuffling non-critical tasks as necessary, we can mobilize quickly for a large project or crisis.

For our ongoing clients, we can often access and maintain systems remotely. In some cases this can reduce repair time from days to minutes, which improves life for everyone involved.

Technology Ally For Smaller Businesses

Smaller organizations behave differently from larger ones: they often maintain their equipment less rigorously; may have more limited financing options; often have more dedicated workers; may think differently about downtime and risk; and are more likely to face rapid growth or decline in their business. Smaller businesses need a technology ally to help understand how their practices affect the bottom line.

Not long ago there was no DSL, no Wi-Fi networking, no digital satellite internet service, no FireWire, no DVD-R, no Macromedia Flash, no internationally available strong encryption, and no such term as "open source". Now these are all facts of life, substantially affecting how the world does business. Many of these new technologies favor small businesses and nonprofits, leveling portions of the playing field.

Some changes in technology can create great opportunities for smaller organizations. The Internet itself, for example, vastly reduced the cost of reaching a national or global audience. The Open Source trend has turned software economics on its ear by offering some superior options for free. IBM and other major corporations are now making investments in Linux - they're investing in order to sell computers to the Fortune 500, but small businesses and nonprofits can reap the benefit.

We are working to document proven methods for smaller businesses to work with technology. By developing practices tailored to small office needs (and by helping small offices develop methods tailored to their technology), we help small businesses reduce technology costs, improve functionality, and gain advantage over larger ventures.

Counting Nines

"Big-time" technology consultants - generally employed by large accounting, telecommunications, or management consulting firms - carry thick binders describing "best practices" for various tasks. While a great deal of effort goes into these guidelines, many are fairly obvious from the corporate perspective, boiling down to things like "buy Cisco network equipment for top reliability." The catch: while some of Cisco's gear is the best, it's also the most expensive.

These consultants are driven by the needs of the Fortune 500 - in particular, they pursue an elusive reliability standard known as "five nines". "Five nines" means 99.999 percent uptime - meaning the system is down less than five and a half minutes per year.

In reality, the Fortune 500 rarely attains five nines even on its most critical applications. Four nines (99.99% uptime) leaves under an hour a year of downtime, generally schedulable in advance. For anything short of a 911 center this is probably acceptable.

For most small businesses, even four nines is just silly. Why? Because the cost of success can dramatically exceed the cost of failure. If a 911 center is down, the possible cost is human lives. If a global airline reservation system is down for an hour, it probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasted wages and lost business, and much more in terms of reputation. But if a ten-person customer service group is offline for an hour the direct costs are probably a few hundred dollars and the reputation damage relatively modest. If such a system achieves just three nines (99.9%) during the business day, they'll be offline only a few hours a year - very likely a good choice depending on how much less the system cost.

Eric Swanson Network Consulting is proud to support a lot of "three nines" solutions. We have the skills to achieve higher reliability, but cannot honestly recommend this costly step to most of our clients.