“Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgiving.”
William Arthur Ward
Things to Be Grateful for This Year
Maybe Thanksgiving isn’t on your radar yet. Or maybe you skipped right over it and are already draping your dog in tinsel. (No judgment here; it’s been a weird year, and we could all use the holiday cheer.) But you’ve got just over a week to plan the perfect Thanksgiving meal. You need to figure out how a table of buttery biscuits and creamy casseroles and socially distanced house guests are going to work.
The stress of the season is upon us just as we have just packed the anxiety away. You’d think we’d be used to the holiday shuffle by now as this happens year after year. The circus juggling act that includes holiday planning, work, kids, and making it look somewhat effortless. Imagine if your job was that of a Systems Administrator on top of everything else life demands of us!
System Admins – Kudos!
I wanted to give thanks to all our dedicated Sys Admins of the IT industry. A system administrator’s job is to ensure computer systems are in good working condition. The job includes software and hardware installations, data recovery, troubleshooting, and software and hardware maintenance.
For example, a hospital has its own software that produces data daily to run their operations. A system administrator is responsible for its installation and maintenance. He or she also ensures that the software is correctly configured. So, a system admin typically deals with the computing resources in the infrastructure, hardware inventories, software license, and capacity planning. WOW, and they probably already have their holiday shopping done!
If you are a small business and blessed to have a systems admin on your team, thank them for keeping the daily operations flowing. If your sysadmin needs some time off, an extra hand on a special project or the business is growing, and the thought of hiring another admin is on your mind, check out what we here at Zunesis can do to offer additional support for them.
Zunesis IT Assessment Services
Zunesis helps provides your organization with the information you need to understand your environment, make informed decisions, and set strategies through our assessment services.
They include the following:
Data Management Assessment – Can be used to focus separately on Production Data, Archive Data, Backup/Recovery, or it can encompass all three.
Recurring Data Center Advisory Services – RDCAS is designed to help clients maintain their HPE infrastructure.
VMware Assessment – Operational Analysis can provide you with the information needed to improve your virtual environment or fast track your IT project.
Wireless Site Survey – Whether you are looking to upgrade your wireless network or validate a recent installation, a professional site survey will give your engineers the data they need to minimize the support calls.
Ransomware Recovery Preparedness Assessment – This IT Risk Assessment, a Zunesis engineer will review and analyze your site to provide observations and recommendations to better prepare your organization for future data attacks.
Firewall Assessment – We will discover the overall utilization of an organization’s current firewall and their adherence to industry’s best standards through a Network Vulnerability Assessment.
When gratitude is elusive and anxiety and stress are taking center stage, I offer more wisdom by one my favorite writers and inspirational maxims.
“Before you act, listen.
Before you react, think.
Before you spend, earn.
Before you criticize, wait.
Before you pray, forgive.
Before you quit, try.”
~ William Arthur Ward
Addressing data-related challenges has been a predominant concern that will continue for the foreseeable future. As budgets are redrawn for next year, investing in your data is a wise choice.
Data Trends in 2020
- The business value of data continues to rise – Every business transformation today—be it greater customer intimacy, more optimized operations, faster innovation, and more—is fueled by data.
- Persistent demand for self-service data is unwavering– Enabled by easier-to-use, more powerful analytic tools, business users now demand access to all data, everywhere, at any and all times.
- Time-to-solution expectations for new data-driven solutions are even faster– With better data-driven solutions often the competitive battlefield, victory goes to the swift.
- Data’s relentless growth accelerates – Captured from the Internet, IoT devices, consumers, vendors, data service providers, and more, these sources combine with increasingly low-cost storage to double the supply of data every 2.5 years.
- Data distribution further widens– Beyond the computer room, data increasingly spans diverse silos on desktops, mobile devices, machines, in the cloud, at third parties, and more.
- Real-time data’s importance soars– Real-time responses to events is increasingly the key to success when engaging with customers and optimizing operations.
- Data quality remains elusive– Diverse and evolving data definitions, syntax, structures, sources, and uses conspire to limit data efficacy.
- New data related regulations will surely arise– Consuming a greater share of data-related spending, compliance with new regulations is not optional as governments respond to citizens’ privacy, security, bias, and other data-related threats.
- Data management becomes even more complex– Effective, efficient delivery of data’s value while addressing data’s myriad challenges stresses every organization’s data management strategy, infrastructure, and organization.
- The data management skills shortage persists –From DBA to data engineer to developer, data management domain knowledge requirements are expanding faster than the complexity itself.
Developing a data management plan with a focus on the projection of expected future storage needs for data, specifications on data sources, data collection and storage, and data security should be at the forefront of the IT Planning list for 2021 for all IT organizations.
How Can Zunesis Help With Your Data Planning
Zunesis can schedule a data management plan “kick-off” with your organization. It is an assessment and inventory of the current state of your environment. The Zunesis Data Management Assessment Service can be used to focus separately on Production Data, Archive Data, Backup/Recovery, or it can encompass all three. The goal of the Data Management Assessment service is to help our customers develop their data management plan. We, then help implement processes that will accommodate data growth and provide data availability, security, and protection of business-critical information.
Zunesis Data Management Assessment Deliverables:
· Storage Architecture Diagram
· Observations about current data management practices
· Recommendations for improving data management practices
· Documentation of short-term and long-term goals and objectives
Zunesis Data Management Assessment Benefits:
· Document current data management practices
· Document strategies for aligning data management to the goals of the business
· Develop processes for protecting data based on business needs
· Document short-term and long-term objectives
Contact Zunesis today to create a data management strategy that fits your individual needs
It’s a frustrating routine: I fall sound asleep at about 10:30 only to wake up a few hours later with my mind racing. This, of course, causes a myriad of after-effects, not the least of which is a very crabby morning-after. So, at the urging of my husband, my New Year’s resolution for 2017 is simple: This year, I resolve to sleep through the night.
In trolling the self-help blogs, a recurring message was that an anecdote to middle-of-the-night worrying is simply being confident that you are in control of all the things that need to be done the next day. Although I’m an avid planner, I have days where I don’t make much of dent in my list. Knowing that, I focused on time management and found five strategies to adopt:
1. Have one “must-achieve” goal every day.
Start each morning with one “must-achieve goal.” More than likely, this is the one thing that will wake you up in the middle of night. If you know that it is the one thing you’re absolutely, no matter what, getting done tomorrow, you don’t need to stress about it tonight.
2. Fight the tyranny of the urgent.
If you succumb to the tyranny of the urgent, you can find yourself going days, or even weeks, without touching the important stuff. Don’t be afraid to ignore or delegate the things that get in the way of real forward momentum.
3. Never touch things twice.
Don’t save an email or a phone call to deal with later. As soon as something gets your attention you should act on it, delegate it, or delete it.
4. Eat a frog.
Do the least appetizing, most dreaded item on your to-do list before you do anything else. This not only gets the nasty task out of the way, but it also gives you a sense of success, boosting further productivity.
5. Get ready for tomorrow before leaving the office.
This practice accomplishes two things: it helps you solidify what you’ve accomplished today, and it ensures you’ll have a productive tomorrow.
Happy New Year, and here’s to sleeping through the night in 2017!
It’s a frustrating routine: I fall sound asleep at about 10:30 only to wake up a few hours later with my mind racing. This, of course, causes a myriad of after-effects, not the least of which is a very crabby morning-after. So, at the urging of my husband, my New Year’s resolution for 2017 is simple: This year, I resolve to sleep through the night.
In trolling the self-help blogs, a recurring message was that an anecdote to middle-of-the-night worrying is simply being confident that you are in control of all the things that need to be done the next day. Although I’m an avid planner, I have days where I don’t make much of dent in my list. Knowing that, I focused on time management and found five strategies to adopt:
1. Have one “must-achieve” goal every day.
Start each morning with one “must-achieve goal.” More than likely, this is the one thing that will wake you up in the middle of night. If you know that it is the one thing you’re absolutely, no matter what, getting done tomorrow, you don’t need to stress about it tonight.
2. Fight the tyranny of the urgent.
If you succumb to the tyranny of the urgent, you can find yourself going days, or even weeks, without touching the important stuff. Don’t be afraid to ignore or delegate the things that get in the way of real forward momentum.
3. Never touch things twice.
Don’t save an email or a phone call to deal with later. As soon as something gets your attention you should act on it, delegate it, or delete it.
4. Eat a frog.
Do the least appetizing, most dreaded item on your to-do list before you do anything else. This not only gets the nasty task out of the way, but it also gives you a sense of success, boosting further productivity.
5. Get ready for tomorrow before leaving the office.
This practice accomplishes two things: it helps you solidify what you’ve accomplished today, and it ensures you’ll have a productive tomorrow.
Happy New Year, and here’s to sleeping through the night in 2017!
