Brace Rennels

I attended a pandemic exercise at Northeastern University last year that was really enlightening and timely considering the latest information about the “swine flu”. Although far from a pandemic at this time, the CDC is taking preventative measures by communicating with the general public what they can do to avoid becoming ill. Here are a few tips that can help spread the transmission. Hygiene- Wash your hands, it sounds insignificant but good hygiene can prevent the transmission by touching objects that others who have the influenza have also touched. Avoid any hand to mouth, eye or nose contact and cover your face if you have to sneeze or cough to also prevent the spread of airborne germs. Social Distancing – If you don’t have to attend gatherings with others, then don’t. The fewer people you come in contact with lowers your risk of contracting the flu. If you do... (more)

Five Tips for Consolidating and Protecting Your Data Center

There are several challenges when attempting a data center move or even just consolidation. Availability is the number one priority. All the systems during the move need to be available so production operations are not interrupted. Depending on the technology you use some solutions will require more downtime than others. If you are consolidating to a blade or virtual machine infrastructure then you also need to prepare for provisioning new servers rapidly. Here are a few tips to help maximize your data center uptime while facilitating a move, migration and or consolidation. Avai... (more)

Five Misconceptions About Social Media Marketing

Actually, it isn't funny it is kind of sad at the number of organizations who still don't understand the value of social media marketing. I have probably met with a dozen companies, founders and senior level executives who have all said. "I don't get it" or "Our company isn't ready for social media" or worse yet just aren't capitalizing on the social media programs they already have in place. So here are 5 misconceptions about social media marketing. 1.) It is a stand alone marketing program - Wrong. Social media is a complimentary marketing option to help supplement and promote... (more)

What's the Disaster Recovery Plan for our Nations Newspapers?

With print advertising declining due to the use of the internet as the primary source of information today, what is the disaster recovery plan of our nation’s newspaper industry? More and more newspapers are facing the challenge of declining advertising revenue and are looking for ways to offset these costs. The Boston Globe recently wrote an editorial column asking their readers, since they already pay about $10 dollars a week for delivery, if they would be willing to pay $10 a week for reading the paper on their website. The answer unfortunately is no. As creatures of habit we... (more)

BCP Lessons Learned and New Ideas for IT Infrastructure Continuity

Businesses in the southeastern United States have been hit hard with hurricanes in the last few years, and 2008 was no exception. As a project manager and CBCP for over 1600 disaster recovery deployments I can share real examples of how entire data centers were failed over to the DR operations center in preparation for hurricanes, while others (due to poor planning) did not have the same success. Those that were successful were efficient in organizing the RTO of their communication servers which helped them prioritize the recovery efforts as well utilize creative testing procedur... (more)