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I knew that some parts of the IT support world were going to be busy as the country shut down and told us all to work from home.  This many users in non-corporate environments were going to have problems – but, like many other things around this virus, the scope was a surprise.

First up – a huge number of people in this country can work from home, it turns out. The issue is that they need a computer to work on – and many companies (rightly) don’t want people working from home on their kids gaming PC.  (Obviously, its not their game machine. Has to be the kids in the house.) So what happens? Well – if this happens to your company, obviously you know what happens – you buy laptops for your employees.  Preferably cheap ones – because you need a ton of them.

Perfectly sensible, so its time to call up the reseller, and .. hmm. I’ve never gotten a busy signal calling these guys before.. let me try this again… still busy.  Maybe I can solve this retail ? hmm, let me check Staples and Best B… hm. No laptops under $3,000.

Oh wait, the phone is ringing, I got my rep – sure, I need 200 laptops. Do you have anything around $500-600 ? You do? Great, when can I .. oh. June, 2021.  Backlo.. yes, I see that. Really, every 100 laptops comes with a free skid of toilet paper? Haha, well, I suppose I could include a roll with each laptop as we get them shipped – what CAN I get in a timely fashion, please?

Ok, it wasn’t quite THAT bad – but it wasn’t as far off as you might think. Affordable, business-capable laptops pretty much sold themselves – all the suppliers are oversold, and for a lot of brands, the hope was to have stock available in ‘a couple of weeks.’

The moral of the story –   If you aren’t prepared to send your staff to work from home on an emergency basis before the emergency arrives, then…..“be prepared to buy more expensive laptops than you wanted, or wait longer than you should.”

At least, unlike all that toilet paper – the laptops have an immediate use.

Along with all these laptops came requests for VPN licenses. Lots of companies, it turns out, have VPN access mechanisms……. For their IT staff.  25 licenses doesn’t go far when you’ve sent 200 people home to work. The saving grace here is that these licenses are electronically delivered , by and large, so they were ordered, and then sent, in a pretty timely fashion.

Not uncommon for the license quantities to be underestimated, though – more than one company sent in new orders for 25, then 50, then 100 more new licenses.  Its remarkably encouraging to watch the corporate world take this kind of thing seriously, though – and send this many people home with the right tools to keep them working!

Or at least – you think its encouraging, until suddenly…

Everyone’s work slows to a crawl, because the addition of all these laptops, and all these VPNs, and all these people at home – every one of them glued to the Internet for updates – well. Where’s all that bandwidth supposed to come from?

Most internet and telecommunications systems are built with a certain amount of capacity and ‘oversubscription’ built in. You sell internet to 100 homes, and on average, only 15 of them will really be using it heavily at any time. It’s a bad day when 50 people are all home and using it at once including the kids watching YouTube and Netflix.

Enter COVID-19. How many hundred thousand jobs suddenly started working out of the home office? No one planned for that. Internet bandwidth goes through the roof.  You know the Internet is overworked when Netflix and Youtube announce that they are reducing the quality of ALL video streams in order to reduce load on the internet – globally.

It was bad enough that we actually saw parts of some service provider networks becoming unavailable – people on one ISP couldn’t talk to another ISP; remote desktop sessions disconnecting – all kinds of weirdness on the Internet.  Having a 1Gb connection to your house doesn’t help when all the pipes at the Internet hubs in the city are jammed to bursting. ISPs adding capacity, new equipment going in – nightly maintenance in some places to try to add more bandwidth; its taken a couple of weeks, but things seem to be a little more stable and a little more reliable – but what a ride.

Looking back, these things obviously all tie together – but I think everyone was surprised at how fast it all happened.

 

While each of us certainly hopes that the COVID-19 coronavirus won’t become a major health event in their part of the world, many businesses are considering contingency plans with a close eye towards avoiding serious disruption of their operations.

This is necessary – there is no doubt that any large-scale outbreak of this coronavirus will be a disruptive event overall – and potentially critically so for businesses that are not prepared.

Working remotely – should you be planning for it?

Remote working, or the practice of working for an extended period outside the formal office, is growing steadily in popularity, enabled by a host of digital tools of virtually every description, from Web conferencing and e-mail to mobile collaboration applications and virtual event platforms.

In my experience with digital productivity and collaboration trends, when it comes to remote work I find that many organizations are frequently stuck in the fairly early stages or have not committed enough yet to design, nevermind invest in full-blown strategies and enablement. Consequently, no matter where you are, there is usually considerable room to improve the digital employee experience when working outside the office.

So, to help organizations as they prepare for a surge in remote work requirements and workers as the coronavirus story unfolds around the world, I’ve put together a fairly comprehensive quick start guide below. This guide will, ideally, help those organizations just getting started as well as those who may already have existing remote work programs but would like to upgrade their effectiveness to minimize impact to their customers, workers, and suppliers.

The strategies and tools below will offer noticeable improvements to the remote working experience and deliver improved downstream results, including  higher productivity, more complete engagement, better work/life balance, and an overall increase in quality of results from remote work.

In general, when I’ve had to choose between presenting either a basic strategy or tool, or the best overall solution , I’ve identified what the basic options are and recommended the best practical approach – solutions that will have enhanced longevity,  or will produce improved overall results for a reasonable amount of effort and expense. Just keep in mind that the better approach may be slightly more complex and time-consuming to realize; at the same time, extra effort and expense can often be recouped with the productivity improvements in these solutions.

Create a safe and effective foundation for remote digital access.

First and foremost, this means providing secure access to IT resources within the business as well as to the internet itself, typically through an internet provider and virtual private network. This requires attention to every part of the connected tech stack, from internet access itself to providing secure means to reach and interact with corporate networks, data, communication channels, and applications. This is also the overhead of managing and supporting the whole process.

Internet access. Don’t assume workers have adequate online access at home or elsewhere. While many will, some won’t have reliable or fast enough service or only a mobile device.

Survey Remote Workers

Quickly survey or otherwise gather data from the workers included in your remote work strategy and determine where the gaps are. For some workers, be prepared to invest in mobile hot spots and associated data plans, as well as providing stipends to establish home internet access plans or upgrades to existing access, which can be especially important for workers that live in more rural areas.

One of the largest blind spots is in knowing how much bandwidth workers will need to be optimally productive, and quickly assessing this early will pay dividends. Remote workers, especially at first, often have to sync their files and data. For some industries, this could be a lot of rich media and data that has to go back and forth regularly. How fast it goes will determine remote work productivity. More significantly, the types of applications that are used regularly, especially web and video conferencing, can determine bandwidth needs as well.Finally, ensure you have a clearly articulated remote work policy along with a plan, communications program, budget, training, and support for ensuring sufficient internet access wherever the worker will be working remotely. Preparing quickstart guides, like those used with consumer technologies, are a big help to shave the initial learning curve off of any new tools or technologies. Organizing power users to support new remote workers, answer questions, and share techniques is also a big help. Normally all of this is part of an overall remote work program, but may be separate depending on who is responsible for providing different services inside your organization.

Remote work devices. There are two major forks in the road when it comes to devices. Either a) workers can use their own, which is a bigger security risk, but quite a bit cheaper and faster to deploy if their devices are up to the task, or b) a company can provide the devices that are needed.

Given that the prevalence of Shadow IT (workers using unsanctioned, unofficial apps to get their work done) is generally higher than most enterprise IT departments are willing to admit — meaning that company data is already on many personal devices anyway — I advise companies to seriously consider assessing workers existing computing hardware to see if they are capable, as they are least expensive and quickest option to enable for a crash remote work program. Organizations can rent, lease, or buy devices as appropriate for those that don’t have them or are not suitable.

What devices are needed? Presumably one smartphone and one computer or tablet, plus any internet access hardware. But your specific business requirements will dictate what is needed. In addition, when providing a superior remote work strategy, there are a number of accessories that can greatly improve the experience, with minimal cost. These include:

•  A webcam for web conferencing, if the worker’s base computing device does not have one. 720P is the minimum acceptable resolution for quality results, but that is usually standard now in most webcams.
• A high-quality headset or headphones with mic. While workers almost always have headphones, you’d be surprised how many don’t have good enough microphones in their headphones for phone or web conferencing.

An “On the Air” sign. Workers located at home or shared locations are at risk of being disturbed during remote meetings by those around them. Inexpensive On the Air signs with remote controls can be purchased at online and make a real difference in the overall quality of the remote work experience during meetings and at any time. For the budget-conscious, On the Air door hangers are also available. The positive impact of using these signs to ensure smooth communications and collaboration is surprisingly high.

Secure remote access to business assets and online services.

While VPN solutions come in a wide variety of flavors, some well-known vendors aren’t always the best, and fly-by-night solutions should be avoided for security, reliability, and support reasons.

Usability and reliability are keys here because almost every other part of the remote work solution will use the VPN as the core foundation for secure internet access.

No VPN, No Access

In general, the worker should never do any work for the organization without the VPN on their device(s) being turned on. This includes online services on the internet. After all, the VPN ensures a higher level of security and safety between the remote worker and business’ information.

Your VPN usage policy must be crisp and clear on what workers are allowed to do with the VPN on, and with it off. It’s important to note that the VPN will be the single most important link in your remote work chain, so ensure your solution works on most devices reliably.

The effectiveness of your VPN can also differ depending on where workers are actually located. In some cases, IP addresses can end up getting blocked when global organizations use local internet services.

Be sure to test all the service providers, devices, and locations to be used, and ensure performance is sufficient. Some VPNs route traffic through central hubs located throughout the world, and are often overtaxed during business hours.

Let Lanworks take the guess work out of setting up a secure VPN, call or email us now!!

 

If you ask 10 people to define “IT Managed Services”, you will most likely get 10 different responses.  Having catered to customers for over 30 years, Lanworks provides customized support services that are as unique, as the customer.

From a Lanworks perspective, a Managed Service is a customer service support program tailored around a customer’s documented, detailed or contractual requirements.  The flexibility of Managed Services is that it can comprise of one or more of the following examples.

• A single task or requirement
  • Firewall Management
• Complete IT Support and Services
  • Total IT Management (servers, firewalls, monitoring, etc)
• Remote or Onsite Support, or both
  • System engineers providing remote and/or help desk (or other) support
• Available 5×8 enginneers or available “as required”
  • Dedicated onsite engineers working at your facility everyday or just when required
• Proactive monitoring and immediate resolution of key and/or critical equipment
  • Immediate notification of a Server outage, with associate call to action
• Reporting and/or Compliance reports
  • Monthly Backup/DR confirmations

Our managed services are centered around organizations that wish to solely concentrate on their business while having minimal involvement with their IT infrastructure. With the influx of malware, viruses and crypto-lockers, the better we understand your network environment, the better we can ensure timely resolutions!

Whether you have an IT department or someone with an assumed role, we have catered our offering to proactively support and service the demands of your business.  Our “We’ve Got YOU Covered” Managed Services offering allows you to pick and choose the services requirements dependent upon your business needs.

KEY BENEFITS

• Customized Support catered around your unique requirements

• Fixed Monthly Budgets to streamline and predict your expenditures

• Fixed Monthly Cost providing consistent predictable budgeting

• Priority Service with SLA’s

• Certified & Experienced Engineers

• Owned & Operated Data Center

• Providing Expertise since 1986

From conceptualization to implementation to training, our goal is to put you in a position to do what you do best: Manage your business. We take the time to understand your business and will provide you with the expertise you need.

Whether you simply want to feel comfortable knowing your support requirements will be met, or just having access to technical know-how whenever you need it – Lanworks will create a customized Managed Services program, just for you!

We’ve Got YOU Covered….in more ways that One!

 

Sometimes, the network just seems to disappear. Everyone in the office starts to get upset, the Internet doesn’t work, the printers don’t work, accounting software doesn’t work – and when you look in the wiring closet, all the switches are lit up and every light is flashing as fast as you’ve ever seen. What’s going on?

When you see this happen to the entire network, its extremely likely – almost (not quite, but almost) certain – that you have a loop.  When an uncontained loop is plugged into a network, a certain percentage of traffic – ‘broadcast, unknown and multicast’ traffic , also called ‘BUM’ traffic – ends up going around a loop, and being copied every time. Every one of these packets, instead of being processed once – has to be processed every time it comes around the loop. Most packets can go around a loop up to 255 times – so if we take a single packet, it goes around once.. then twice, then 4 times, 8,16,32.. if it goes around the loop 16 times, that packet needs to be processed 65536 times… then 130,000 more, then 260,000 more… then.. forget it. We don’t need to count that high to see the problem.  And the best part is that every device – every PC, every phone, every printer, every switch – they ALL receive ALL THOSE PACKETS. So the entire network, all at once, gives up.

There’s a protocol called STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) we use to keep this from happening , but.. well, ok, the protocol works – but it only really works works well as long as there is organizational control over all the switches and connections being put on the network.

If someone comes in – a presenter who brings in a switch from a Big Box Retailer because he needs more wired ports in a boardroom; a vendor installing a complicated A/V solution; a VOIP vendor installing a new teleconferencing bridge – and they connect more than one port into your network and make a loop, their equipment must be configured to match yours, or this happens to you. Some equipment, there really is no fixing. If you’re bored and have no one on the network at some point, take an IP phone and plug the ‘LAN’ and ‘PC’ side of it into your network at once, and start a stopwatch to see how long it takes one phone to bring down your network.

Be on top of your network – when people need to connect equipment, don’t just say YES. Find out what they need and be involved in their configurations.  Communicate to your users not to bring equipment into boardrooms, or at their desks. Even do audits for unauthorized equipment if you need to.

If you need help, Lanworks is here to assist.  Don’t wait for everyone at once to stand up and shout that they can’t even call the helpdesk because all the phones are down.

Be proactive, and be aware.

Is the Cloud Right for you?

Transforming business operations to the cloud, has for some changed the way their data is stored, accessed and secured.  With an “Always On”, “Improved Mobility” and “Improved Collaboration” perspective, does the “Cloud” offer real value, or is it mostly hype.  Our session will provide you with a personal approach to review your present day business operations and evaluate your needs to determine, if the “cloud is right for you”.

Our workshop will assist you in understanding, if your business can benefit from the “cloud”:

• Do you know how the cloud works?
• Is the data secure?
• Can it simplify your current IT management?
• Where does the data reside? Canada or USA?  Does it matter?
• Can it save you money?

Personalized ½ day one-on-one session with our experts, discussing Cloud concepts, practices, scenarios and how it specifically relates to you and your business.

 A Discussion pertaining to your current environment will include: 

1. Cloud/Hybrid concepts, structure and management
2. Data Storage Requirements: File storage & sharing
3. Data Accessibility – VPN, RDS and VDI
4. Resident in-house applications vs. web applications
5. Data Security, Backup and Recoverability
6. Best Business Practices – tips and industry insights (O365 Backup)
7. In-house training requirements
8. Cloud Managed Services and Support
9. Cloud Costs Comparisons and ROI

Since 1986, our specialty has been the world of emerging technologies, focusing on security and networking. We take the time to understand your business needs and then we go above and beyond to help create innovative solutions designed with your business goals in mind. When you partner with Lanworks, you get more than just a line card of products and services – you gain a professional, hands-on technology partner who is dedicated to giving your business a competitive advantage.