Haven't you made your New Year IT resolutions yet?

BANGALORE, INDIA: 2010 sees the start of not just a new year, but a new decade. After one of the most difficult economic periods in memory, it is time to make plans for year ahead.

Outsourced IT services supplier, Conosco, is offering tips to make IT resolutions, and reckons that just six changes can help firms save time, costs and IT headaches.

Detox:

The new year is an ideal time to review, repair and renew your IT systems, giving them a bit of an early spring clean. One example is to look at your data storage and back up. All businesses accumulate gigabytes of data, which they then have to store and back up. Use the time to clean up your file stores and delete old files and duplicates.

Clouds on the horizon:

In the cloud services, more commonly known as software as a service (Saas) are becoming increasingly popular for companies of all sizes. Industry analyst group, Gartner recently presented cloud computing as one of its “top 10 strategic technologies for 2010”, so it could time for firms who do not already use them to look more closely at the benefits, whether it is the fixed costs, flexibility or ease of use.

Virtually there:

There is a lot of talk about this term ‘virtualisation’, but what does it mean for growing businesses? Used the right way, server virtualisation can be a powerful way to drive down costs and increase flexibility. By reducing your number of physical servers, you automatically reduce your upfront capital expenditure and installation costs.

Whether you are a start-up or have ageing servers, virtualisation can radically reduce an IT budget. Similarly, the running costs of virtual servers are lower, due to fewer physical parts to maintain and replace, and with less power consumption they are also greener.

Being sociable:

Nowadays social media and work are like the proverbial ‘horse and carriage’ – they just go together! Even if you personally are not using the likes of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, IM or other online tools, do not be fooled into thinking your employees, partners and customers are abstaining. You need to manage social media activity among staff, rather than trying to ban it like so many businesses do. Social media also needs to be taken into consideration when assessing your security needs.

The security of business:

Which brings us onto the business of securing your IT systems. Never has this been more important – and social media is just one element of it. Effective IT security can help you control and secure information from malicious downloads, web viruses and even the theft of confidential data.

Consider the benefits of a multi-layered security approach, which basically includes three key elements: actively managed patch management; anti-virus (AV) for your PCs and servers; and desktop tools and firewall-level web filtering to stop you and your employees visiting potentially ‘bad’ websites.

Google it!

Love it or hate it, Google for business is here to stay, so start looking at the potential benefits. Do not fall into the trap of paying Microsoft's licensing fees if you don’t have to. If you don't need all the bells and whistles of software like Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and so on, think about switching to web-based Google Apps, which is far cheaper and in many cases better.

Ben Gladstone, CEO of Conosco, adds: “2010 could also be the year to look into how you can further ease your IT load. Outsourced IT services are now more affordable and manageable than ever and remove the headache of doing it yourself. Smaller firms can benefit from the level and breadth of IT services that previously only large corporates could afford, but with the same emphasis on reducing downtime and costs by preventing problems rather than fixing them.”